[uf-discuss] [hCite] call for examples: language

[Michael McCracken]

On 2/1/07, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
> In message
> <d4fa3cf70702011117w355d6b52n697caddc474d232b at mail.gmail.com>, Michael
> McCracken <michael.mccracken at gmail.com> writes
>
> >On 1/31/07, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
> >> In message
> >> <d4fa3cf70701310055j77b87d79r5e2d1e4c0b0d4435 at mail.gmail.com>, Michael
> >> McCracken <michael.mccracken at gmail.com> writes
> >>
> >> >- We only have two examples of pages marking up the language on the
> >> >web - W3C and Amazon.com.
> >>
> >> Might that be because most if not all of the examples are from
> >> English-language websites, and that English-speakers are less likely to
> >> be aware of language of an issue, or to be working on second languages?
> >>
> >
> >Absolutely - I'm asking for help to correct this bias.
>
> Doh! I have some myself, on:
>
>         <http://www.westmidlandbirdclub.com/biblio/bb/70-465.htm>

Nice, those are good examples - they do mark up the language of the
citation itself, but don't mention the language of the cited object
(presumably because it's easy to deduce) - was that intentional or
just following established practice?

Also, could you add those examples to the citation-examples &
citation-examples-markup wiki pages (if they're not already there)?

In my experience, established practice is that the language is not
explicitly stated, and if it is, the case of a citation printing a
title in one language that is referring to an item in a different
language (eg, printing the title of a german book in english)  is
rare.

So if the evidence confirms my suspicion that it's really rare to need
to mark up the language of (for example) the book separately from the
language of the words in the book's title, then can we just say that
the language is inferred from the @lang property of the hcite element?
(And hence, drop the 'language' field from the hCite straw format?)

Thanks,
-mike

-- 
Michael McCracken
UCSD CSE PhD Candidate
research: http://www.cse.ucsd.edu/~mmccrack/
misc: http://michael-mccracken.net/wp/