Status on es-americas

[Peter_Constable@sil.org]

On 06/21/2002 11:38:26 AM Youngmin Radochonski wrote:

>Could you please advise whether I can go ahead with es-americas or not?

[snip]

>> --------------------------updated form --------------------

[snip]

>>    Any other relevant information:
>>
>>    "this tag is supposed to be a collective tag for the language
variants
>>     es-AR, es-BO, es-CL, es-CO, es-CR, es-CU, es-DO, es-EC,
>>     es-FK, es-GT, es-HN, es-MX, es-NI, es-PA, es-PE, es-PR,
>>     es-PY, es-SV, es-UY, es-VE"


My opinion (whether others agree or not, I don't know) as I expressed in an
earlier message is that I don't think enough  is being said about what this
is and what it's good for. Saying that it is a collective tag just isn't
adequate. That might give someone the impression that they can choose to
tag their es-MX data as es-america whenever they want, which isn't right.
It also fails to point implementers to something you probably would want:
for a server to provide es-americas data if the user indicates a preference
for es-AR, es-BO, etc. (but *not* vice versa).

Might I suggest the following? It's long for a registration, but it doesn't
leave a number of important details left to the reader's imagination.

 --------------------------updated form --------------------

    LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM

    Name of requester          : Youngmin Radochonski

    E-mail address of requester: youngmin.radochonski@sun.com

    Tag to be registered       : es-americas

    English name of language   : Latin American Spanish

    Native name of language (transcribed into ASCII): espanol de America
Latina

    Reference to published description of the language (book or article):

    Any other relevant information:

      This tag is intended for use on content that has been tailored for
      Spanish audiences throughout Latin America. It is not a collection
      for all Latin American Spanish varieties; it merely indicates that
      the author made choices in vocabulary, grammar, spelling, etc. that
      would make the content reasonably acceptable to speakers of all
      Latin American Spanish varieties. (This tag does not imply any
      further details regarding what those choices may have been,
      however.)

      This tag is intended primarily for cataloguing of localised content
      and resources, rather than for specifying language preference on
      retrieval. Ideally, a system should be able to deliver content
      labelled with this tag in response to requests for any specific
      Latin American Spanish variety, including but not limited to the
      following:

        es-AR, es-BO, es-CL, es-CO, es-CR, es-CU, es-DO, es-EC,
        es-FK, es-GT, es-HN, es-MX, es-NI, es-PA, es-PE, es-PR,
        es-PY, es-SV, es-UY, es-VE.

      Of course, systems can also be implemented to offer this tag as a
      user-preference option, and a server should deliver content
      labelled with this tag when requested for the same. On the other
      hand, it is not valid to assume that a request for "es-americas"
      can be serviced by returning content labelled as es-AR, or es-BO,
      es-CL, etc.

      It would be appropriate to deliver content labelled with this tag
      in response to the more generic request, "es" (cf. section 2.5 of
      RFC 3066).

 ------------------------------------------------------------------



- Peter


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>