Cascading of xml:lang attribute

["Su-Laine Yeo" <su-laine.yeo@justsystems.com>]

Title: Cascading of xml:lang attribute

Hi everyone,

A bug report for the DITA Open Toolkit has raised some interesting discussion:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=725074&aid=3038532&group_id=132728

Users need to know if they need to set the xml:lang attribute only in their primary map, or for every topic. Developers of processors need to know if processors should look at the map when deciding what locale to use when displaying topics.

Say you have a <note> element in a DITA topic that is referenced by a DITA map. My reading of the DITA 1.1 spec is that language should be determined as follows:

1) Get xml:lang from the <note> element. If xml:lang is not defined there, get it from the closest ancestor within the topic.

2) If xml:lang not defined in an ancestor of <note> within the topic, get it from the <topicref> in the map.

3) If xml:lang not defined in the <topicref>, get it from closest ancestor of the <topicref> within the map.

4) If xml:lang is not defined in any ancestor of the <topicref> within the map, the processor should assume a default value.

However, the draft DITA 1.2 spec contains the sentence “The @xml:lang value does not cascade from one map to another or from a map to a topic”, which seems to imply that the language should be determined as follows:

1) Get xml:lang from the <note> element. If xml:lang is not defined there, get it from the closest ancestor within the topic.

2) If xml:lang not defined in an ancestor of <note> within the topic, the processor should assume a default value.

Is this the intention?

Su-Laine

Su-Laine Yeo
Solutions Consultant

JustSystems Canada, Inc.
Office: 778-327-6356
syeo@justsystems.com

www.justsystems.com

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