Perhaps a draft RFC on Script codes?

Sean M. Burke sburke@cpan.org
Sat, 07 Dec 2002 20:14:34 -0700


At 13:28 2002-12-06 +0000, John Clews wrote:
>4.6 Application of script codes
>Script codes can be used in the following particular instances.
>
>4.6.1 To indicate generally the scripts in which documents are or have 
>been written or recorded.
>
>Example:
><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" CONTENT="ga, ru">
><META NAME="Content-Script" CONTENT="Latg, Cyrl">

Why not just this...?
<META NAME="Content-Language" CONTENT="ga-Latg, ru-Cyrl">

I'm not suggesting that a script is a meaningless thing in the absence of a 
language tag; but I do mean that in most cases of, for example, 
content-negotiation, people would express a script preference only as an 
addendum to a language preference.  I.e., if someone means to say "I like 
Gaelic and Russian, and I like Latin-script and Cyrillic-script", they 
really don't mean that they'd welcome Russian in Latin or Gaelic in 
Cyrillic -- what they mean is more like Accept-Language: ru-Cyrl, ga-Latn.

>4.6.3 To indicate the script used by an application.
>Example:
>"Laser Syriac: The fonts supplied in this package are coded according to 
>collection 85 of Annex A of ISO/IEC  10646 and provide a complete set of 
>glyphs in all three of the styles used to write Syriac (Syre, Syrn, Syrj)."

Great example!  A font is a perfect example of a a script is quite sensibly 
divorced from a language.  In fact, I can't think of other examples 
offhand.  I'd appreciate if people could think of some more.

--
Sean M. Burke    http://search.cpan.org/author/sburke/