Re: DOCBOOK: Attributes for text direction and language

[Bob Stayton <bobs@caldera.com>]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2002 at 07:28:29AM +0900, Tsuguya Sasaki wrote:
> I'm new to DocBook, so I apologize in advance if someone else has
> already asked the following questions; I couldn't find anything about
> them in the archive of this list.
> 
> 1) What is the DocBook equivalent, if any, of the HTML attribute DIR
> for specifying in which direction, i.e. left-to-right or right-to-left,
> text should be rendered within the containing element?

I don't  know of one.  Wouldn't the direction be determined
by the lang?
 
> 2) What is the correct way to specify the language used within the
> content of a certain element in DocBook *XML*: a) with the LANG
> attribute (as in HTML), b) with the LANG and XML:LANG attributes
> (as in XHTML 1.0), or c) with the XML:LANG attribute (as in XHTML
> 1.1)?

Either 'lang' or 'xml:lang' attribute would be correct
(note they use lowercase letters).  The 'lang' attribute is
declared in the DocBook DTD for just about every element.
The 'xml:lang' attribute is outside the DocBook DTD, of
course, but is defined in the xml namespace specifically
for that purpose.  The DocBook XSL stylesheets support both.

-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
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