[Fwd]: Response to Mark's message]

Martin Duerst duerst at w3.org
Wed Apr 9 15:57:32 CEST 2003


At 10:08 03/04/09 -0700, Mark Davis wrote:
>There is a misunderstanding here. However one defines locales, one needs a
>language ID to be useful. For example, someone might define a locale to
>include:
>
>written language ID
>country ID of residence
>country ID of citizenship
>country ID of bank account
>timezone ID
>
>[This is actually the defintion needed by a customer I was talking to just
>yesterday.]

This is a good example, in that it shows that different applications
have very differing needs. I never would want a generally used
locale definition to include the above items, because in particular
citizenship and bank account have clear privacy implications.

So I think we need to make it easier to write good applications,
and continuing to wonder what a 'locale' might not be the best
way to do that.


>As a part of that definition, one needs an unambiguous specification of
>*written* language.

Can you define what you mean by 'unambiguous'?


>ISO-639 fails miserably as unambiguous specification of written language. I
>realize that the proponents of ISO-639 don't even want it to apply to
>written language. But for information technology, distinguishing written
>language is the 999% case; merely spoken language is mostly unproductive.
>
>RFC 3066 is somewhat better, but has the problems as discussed on this list.
>As to the issue of whether RFC 3066bis should include SIL codes directly or
>not, technically I don't much care. I suspect it would be slightly cleaner
>if 3066bis just included some ISO standard.
>
>However, the need for the addition of a script subtag to 3066bis is clear
>and present. And if 3066bis does not address that issue *very* soon,

PLEASE!!! Stop complaining, start acting. Please submit the
necessary registrations for the 10 or 20 combinations that you
need, and follow through with these registrations.


Regards,    Martin.


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