Re: HTML 2.0 comments (Second of two)

Paul Burchard (burchard@horizon.math.utah.edu)
Wed, 23 Nov 94 18:00:26 EST

"Sandra Martin O'Donnell" <odonnell@osf.org> writes:
> Re: the RADIO element and VALUE field. Is it possible to have
> multiple language versions of the name values? For example,
> could HTML use a messaging system to allow, say, French,
> English, and German (and Japanese, if you break free of the
> Latin-1 limitation) versions of values?
>
> Section 3.13.6
> Same question as above. Can SELECT support multiple language
> versions of the values?

The VALUE of a RADIO button is never displayed to the user; it is
only of interest to the server. Any text that the user might see
next to the RADIO button must be specified as separate HTML. The
same holds for the explicit VALUE (as opposed to content) of an
OPTION inside a SELECT menu. So any general alternate-text mechanism
for HTML would take care these two FORM widgets.

The SUBMIT and RESET buttons, however, do use the VALUE as a display
string. You're right that a general alternate-text mechanism for
HTML wouldn't cover these labels. (But at least the
"application-specific" default VALUE could take the user's language
and charset preferences into account.)

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Paul Burchard <burchard@math.utah.edu>
``I'm still learning how to count backwards from infinity...''
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