Message-Id: <6.2.1.2.2.20050707020333.05450b20@mail.afrac.org>
Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2005 02:17:45 +0200
To: "Randy Presuhn" <randy_presuhn@mindspring.com>, <ltru@ietf.org>
From: r&d afrac <rd@afrac.org>
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Private Use Tags
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At 20:45 06/07/2005, Randy Presuhn wrote:
>Hi Dylan -
>
>If I might summarize your message, I think you have four concerns:
>    1) are tags descriptive or prescriptive?
>    2) how well does the specification cope with new languages?
>    3) support for tagging other linguistics aspects of a document
>    4) is the space defined by the extension mechanism sufficiently large?
>
>As a technical contributor, I think your first concern can be definitively
>answered: "Language tags are, from a linguistic perspective, descriptive."
>Would it be helpful to include this sentence in the i-d?  The only person
>who has argued otherwise, as far as I know, is Mr. Morfin.

I am afraid this may be a mis-representation of my position. I do not want 
it to be said "descriptive", I wand it to be defined. This being said, I 
would certainly welcome the wording proposed by Dylan: I am not sure wat 
your "linguistic perspective" want to say, all the more than languages are 
not defined.

>On your second concern, the support for novel or artificial languages, the
>draft is quite clear that if the language is used by humans for communication
>with humans, it is within scope.  (Section 2)  Since, as you affirm, 
>Klingon is
>in use for human-to-human communication, it has been registered.  I think
>this is a pretty convincing demonstration that the registry can cope with 
>novel
>languages.
>
>Regarding your third concern, tagging other linguistic aspects of a document,
>as "social class" or "preferred spelling dictionary", I think you'd find some
>lack of agreement on whether these belong in a language tag or whether
>they should be regarded as distinct attributes.

Referent and context (or style) defines versions of a language.

>The working group does not
>need to resolve this question to meet the terms of its charter.

I disagree. Not on the integration of ISO codes. But on scalability.

>   My personal
>view is that this is a good thing; the universe of all possible attributes of
>linguistic interest is far to large to permit completion of our work in a
>reasonable time.

No. It is sufficient to say that referent and context subtags (particulars 
of a language, and particulars to its mode of usage) are given a format and 
to be registered. This only calls for the use of ".". 
en.oxford.casual-Latn-US is OK with me. Or en.IBM.admin-Latn-US. Parsers 
need only to stop at the first "." in a subtag.

>  I think using a language tag to encode all the
>linguistic attributes of a document makes as much sense as trying to
>boil the ocean.  There's a big difference between identifying the language
>of a document and cataloging all its linguistic attributes.

True. This is why the idea to formally attach non related attributes is an 
odd idea. Also to document it via an RFC and to make it a IANA registry. 
But if you really want it, it is to be engaged correctly. This means it 
must scale.

>On your fourth concern, whether the space defined by the syntax of the
>extension mechanisms is sufficiently large, depends in large part on the
>extent to which you try to use language tags to address your third concern.
>If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem is a nail.  :-)

Scalability is the limit. What means there is no limit.
jfc


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