[uf-discuss] Re: [hCite] call for examples: language (Andy Mabbett)

[Ryan Cannon]

On Feb 2, 2007, at 11:13 AM, Andy Mabbett wrote:

> I may be rare, but it does happen. "Mein Kampf" in English is still
> titled "Mein Kampf"
>
>> 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,

<snip>

>> (And hence, drop the 'language' field from the hCite straw format?)
>
> I still don't think that that are anywhere near enough examples,
> especially of non-English-language sources, to be confident that it's
> not widely used.

I'm going to suggest that a language field--for works where the title
incorrectly implies the resources language--sits outside of the 80/20  
for
a citation microformat for a number of reasons:

  1. According to our current evidence it's very rare
  2. In some cases where it does occur (online resources) common HTML
     constructs (@hreflang) fulfill the need completely.
  3. In many remaining contexts, language differences are unimportant  
for
     the user. E.g.: a scholar chasing the citations of a critique of
     French literature written in English will likely already know  
French.

-- 
Ryan

http://RyanCannon.com