Would it be possible to add something to DOM4 to allow one to find out what
language (xml:lang) was inherited from up the chain, if any?
Use cases:
1. I need to find elements of a particular type/name that are in a particular
language (in tree order), so that I can extract that information to display to
a user.
2. I need to check what the language of an element is (if any), without walking
up the tree to look for an xml:lang attribute. Walking the tree is expensive,
specially when XML says that xml:lang value is inherited by default.
(my motivation is making it simpler to implement Widget's i18n model, which
relies on xml:lang's inheritance propagating through an XML document: having
something to access the XML values above would make the implementation easier).
Just of the top of my head:
<foo>
<bar xml:lang="en"/>
<bar xml:lang="en-us">
<baz xml:lang="">
</bar>
</foo>
//using BCP 47 [lookup] algorithm
var listOfElements = document.getElementsByLang("en-us");
listOfElements[1].lang == "en";
listOfElements[0].lang == "en-us";
[lookup]
http://tools.ietf.org/html/bcp47#page-2-12
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Marcos Caceres
