Its0601TechLangAuth
ITS WG Collaborative editing page
Specify the language of the content
Having information about what is the language of a content is very important in many situation. Some of them are:
- selection of a proper font (e.g. for traditional or simplified Chinese)
- processing of the text for wrapping and hyphenation
- spell-checking the text
- selecting proper formatting properties for data such as date, numbers, etc.
- selecting proper automated text such as quotation marks or other punctuation signs
Technique: Use xml:lang to specify in what language is your content
Use the xml:lang attribute to specify in what language is the content of your document.
The normal way of specifying the language of a document is to declare it in the root element and, if needed, to override that initial declaration for parts of the document in a different language.
In this example, the main content of the document in in English, while a short citation is identified as being in French Canadian. <document xml:lang="en"> <para>The motto of Québec is the short phrase: <q xml:lang="fr-ca">Je me souviens</q>. It is chiseled on the front of the Parliament Building.</para> </document>