Message-Id: <6.1.2.0.2.20050314113456.03fbf070@mail.jefsey.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 16:02:00 +0100
To: John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>,
	Frank Ellermann <nobody@xyzzy.claranet.de>
From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@jefsey.com>
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Re: Update to proposed registry
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I note this quoted RFC 2277 paragraph is inconsistent on the "English" issue.

At 04:58 14/03/2005, John Cowan wrote:
>   Messages in Default Language MUST be understandable by an English-
>    speaking person,

This is consistent with current international and industry practice which 
is the use of Basic English that obviously every English person will 
understand.

>    since English is the language which, worldwide, the
>    greatest number of people will be able to get adequate help in
>    interpreting when working with computers.

This  is uncorrect. My Franglish shows it. The language the greatest number 
of persons working with computers will be able to interpret is Basic 
English. As far as I remember from long ago Boeing Basic English uses 800 
terms and Airbus 400. Oxford or Harvard English will be of no use to 
programers or users.

A common example is "depress the A key" is perfect ununderstable English to 
a user. "Hit the A key" is.

I note that (at least a decade ago) DoD RFPs required text documentations 
to match grade tests. A kid of a given grade was to be able to understand 
the text: a program made available by various US Agencies and private firms 
permited to run the test.

There should be a way to describe these different English langagues.

>   Note that negotiating English is NOT the same as Default Language;
>    Default Language is an emergency measure in otherwise unmanageable
>    situations.
>
>    In many cases, using only English text is reasonable; in some cases,
>    the English text may be augumented by text in other languages.

I suggest that an RFC considers the definition of a IANA Basic English and 
of an international code consistency. For example, I note that "xn" (the 
header of ACE labels produced by punycode) is the standard European code 
for "danger" and a promotion for XN Inc. the leading insurrance company for 
expatriated persons. It is also commonly understood as "Christians" and in 
some readings as "xenophobe", different understandings which are not 
appropriate with the signaling of an international transcoding of a local 
language.

Such an RFC could also address the issue of the language Icons in an ISO 
7000 consistent way.
jfc


=====================================================
For your convenience:
Draft: 		http://www.inter-locale.com/ID/draft-ietf-ltru-registry-00.txt
Charter: 	http://ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
gmane: 	http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.ltru
If you were Bcced for information and not familliar with the IETF process:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2026.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2418.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3934.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3669.txt
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3160.txt
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-hoffman-taobis-02.txt
=====================================================
Jon Postel (RFC 1591): "The IANA is not in the business of deciding
what is and what is not a country. The selection of the ISO 3166 list
  as a basis for country code top-level domain names was made with
  the knowledge that ISO has a procedure for determining which
entities should be and should not be on that list."
=====================================================
Brian Carpenter (RFC 1958/3.2): "If there are several ways of doing the
same thing, choose one. If a previous design, in the Internet context
or elsewhere, has successfully solved the same problem, choose the
same solution unless there is a good technical reason not to.
Duplication of the same protocol functionality should be avoided as far as
possible, without of course using this argument to reject improvements."
=====================================================
It seems that what works for countries and ISO 3166 since 1978 should
apply to languages and to ISO 693.
=====================================================


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