Using - or _ in language tags and/or locales

[John Clews]

Using - or _ in language tags and/or locales
[was Re: xx-XX-nnnn vs. xx-nnnn in Chinese and German]

In message <p05101001b890a2063ec2@[193.120.113.44]> Michael Everson wrote:

> The spelling of January in date formats is a locale issue not a 
> language tagging issue. You can already use de_AT and de_DE for that, 
> and indeed that is recommended. Are there other differences common 
> enough to warrant a language tag?
> 
> de-AT and de-DE are legal according to the RFC anyway, as are en-GB 
> and en-US and en-IE.

Using _ in "locale tags" and using - in language tags provides a very
simple visual distinction between "locale tags" and language tags.

However, from memory (and perhaps Keld can clear this up) I recall
that some specification being developed under the auspices of
JTC1/SC22/WG20 (was it ISO/IEC DTR 14652? I can't remember) proposed
that "locale tags" could use - as an alternative to using _ in locales.

To me this blurs the distinction between locales and language tags
(two different things, though with byte strings in common).

Is this blurring useful or not? Again from memory I think it was
suggested that in some programming languages there were difficulties
in software distinguishing between strings using _ and
strings using -  in situations like this.

Any comments on this point from anybody else?

Best regards

John Clews

Original message below in full, for reference:

In message <p05101001b890a2063ec2@[193.120.113.44]> Michael Everson writes:
> At 21:57 +0100 2002-02-13, Torsten Bronger wrote:
> 
> >I need de-AT/DE for the mapping on LaTeX identifiers.  LaTeX has to
> >distinguish, because it generates some text.  E.g. the date:  "Januar" in
> >Germany, "J=E4nner" in Austria.  So if I write a letter in XML which is
> >converted to LaTeX which then puts in the date -- the country of origin
> >is essential.
> 
> The spelling of January in date formats is a locale issue not a 
> language tagging issue. You can already use de_AT and de_DE for that, 
> and indeed that is recommended. Are there other differences common 
> enough to warrant a language tag?
> 
> de-AT and de-DE are legal according to the RFC anyway, as are en-GB 
> and en-US and en-IE.
> -- 
> Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-languages mailing list
> Ietf-languages@eikenes.alvestrand.no
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages


--
John Clews,
Keytempo Limited (Information Management),
8 Avenue Rd, Harrogate, HG2 7PG
Email: Scripts@sesame.demon.co.uk
tel: +44 1423 888 432;

Committee Member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG20: Internationalization;
Committee Member of ISO/TC37/SC2/WG1: Language Codes