[Fwd]: Response to Mark's message]

[Peter_Constable at sil.org]

Addison Phillips wrote on 04/04/2003 03:12:16 PM:


> The latter. They aren't attributes of text (or numbers or dates or ...).
> IOW a locale >>should<< not be used as a modifier to a data structure.
> It, of course, can itself be exchanged or made to be a field in a data
> structure. But to say that, for example, an "object of type 'x' has a
> locale of 'y'" seems like (at best) very poor internationalization...

This is in contrast to identifiers for things like languages, orthographies
and spelling conventions: it is completely appropriate that strings should
be so tagged.



> To go back to the starting point here, if (a) RFC3066 were changed to
> resolve the majority of variant problems with locale identifiers

I, for one, do not think that RFC3066 should be changed to deal with
locales. It *should* be changed to accommodate distinctions in things like
writing system/orthographies/spelling conventions as well as language, but
not locales. Such an extended RFC3066 would be of use for locale
identification since language and text-related distinctions are relevant
for locales, but locales go beyond the scope of what RFC3066 has been and
should be intended to deal with.



- Peter


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Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
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