Message-Id: <6.1.2.0.2.20050418134729.043e8900@mail.jefsey.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 14:10:08 +0200
To: "L.Gillam" <L.Gillam@surrey.ac.uk>,
	ietf-languages <ietf-languages@alvestrand.no>
From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@jefsey.com>
In-Reply-To: <4A7C6FA2AB31194E80E13FE585F6A21292A42D@EVS-EC1-NODE1.surre
	y.ac.uk>
References: <4A7C6FA2AB31194E80E13FE585F6A21292A42D@EVS-EC1-NODE1.surrey.ac.uk>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Cc: 
Subject: RE: Distinguishing Greek and Greek
Precedence: list
Sender: ietf-languages-bounces@alvestrand.no
Errors-To: ietf-languages-bounces@alvestrand.no

At 11:02 18/04/2005, L.Gillam wrote:
>15 April 2005 20:34, JFC (Jefsey) Morfin wrote:
>
> > Please ... I just wonder how a person speaking a non written
> > language can
> > identified its script and its name written in that script.
>
>A spoken-only (non-written) language has no script. To identify a name
>in a script would, I think, entail making use of a written language of
>some form. An unavoidable difficulty, one would suggest, even in your
>multilingual internet.
>
> > >I think the "country flag" problem has been identified previously.
> >
> > Flags are of interest only when a country has a national
> > language and one
> > wants to indicate that language in that country. This is one
> > of the form of
> > icon. But this is the same problem as the langtag: this is
> > the same as the
> > current bundled set of information (language+country). If you
> > use the name
> > of the language and the script, it is the same as a "en-Latn"
> > langtag. That
> > icon plus a flag would be like the en-Latn-UK langtag. etc.
>
>Here you would require a system to support image processing also in order to
>analyse the image file containing the flag to ensure people are exchanging
>data accurately. You have have to hope that the colour composition in each
>image was good enough to distinguish between all those tricolours, crosses,
>etc. - or do you suggest something like fr-[french_flag.jpg].

???
I am not sure I understand?

>You already
>identify a limitation to the coverage of such a system - how many countries
>have "official" languages?

Yes. This is why this is a very limited application.

>Canada has 2, so the Canadian flag at minimum would give you an ambiguity. 
>And though you might use a UK flag, English is not such an "official" 
>language, and the construct would be en-Latn-GB. And that's before we get 
>into politically sensitive issues of flag use.

I am not sure I understand? But using a country flag in a language icon is 
like using an ISO 3166 subtag in a language tag.
jfc 

_______________________________________________
Ietf-languages mailing list
Ietf-languages@alvestrand.no
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages