[Juser] Language tags

Tue Dec 11 18:03:57 CST 2007

Gerrit Sangel wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> I have a question concerning language tags.
> 
> In (X)HTML, you can specify the language for a specific paragraph or word via 
> the lang attribute of XML, e.g.
> 
> <p xml:lang="de" lang="de">Guten Morgen</p>
> 
> This is almost really necessary for Han characters, which were unified in 
> Unicode. Characters, which look different in China or Japan have the same 
> codepoint but have a different appearance controlled via the xml:lang 
> attribute. In (X)HTML, the Browser will then choose an appropriate font for 
> the characters.
> 
> I wonder if this is also possible in Jabber? 

Hmm, I see that we don't recommend this in XHTML-IM at the level of the
<p/> or <span/> element:

http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0071.html#profile-attributes-common

Do you want to send the same message <body/> in different languages, or
include different languages in the same <body/>?

> Because Jabber is an XML 
> protocol, I think it should be generally possible to include the language tag 
> in a message? Maybe just like <body xml:lang="ja"> and so on. 

Yes, you can send multiple versions of the same message with different
xml:lang values.

> I tried this, 
> but my client did not change anything (ok, I’m using Kopete, maybe it doesn’t 
> support this). But this would then change the language for the entire 
> message, I’d need to change the language for specific words.

We don't support that yet.

> I sometimes have the problem, that I am chatting with someone about Chinese 
> and Japanese characters, but we can’t say „This is the way it looks in 
> Chinese and that way in Japanese“, because the application uses the same font 
> for all characters.

You can do it with separate messages, but not in the same message. At
least not yet.

And by "can" I mean that it is supported in the protocol, not
necessarily in all clients.

> Also, if I chat with a Japanese person, I would like to see a Japanese font, 
> but when I’m chatting with a Chinese, I would like a Chinese font.
> 
> Is this maybe possible? Kopete doesn’t seem to have this feature. Does anyone 
> know of a Jabber client which would support this (given that the Jabber 
> protocol supports this)?

See above.

Peter

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