FW: LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORMS

Mark Davis mark.davis at jtcsv.com
Wed Apr 30 18:46:15 CEST 2003


> Then we are screwed and there will be no end of duplicate referents,
> and I really dislike that. :-( I do not think we should have
> duplicate referents.

Nobody is screwed (that I know of). These are not duplicates. Think
again in terms of matches:

"az" matches all and only documents that are in Azeri, no matter how
they are written.
"az-latn" matches all and only documents that are in Azeri AND written
in Latin script
"az-cryl" matches all and only documents that are in Azeri AND written
in Cyrillic script

The sets of documents matched by each of these is distinct. These are
*not* duplicates: the sets matched by each of these is different. They
*are* different entities.

Remember that there are *multiple* functions of RFC 3066 codes:

   "This document describes a language tag for use in cases where it
is
   desired to indicate the language used in an information object, how
   to register values for use in this language tag, and a construct
for
   matching such language tags."

As I said before, defaults only make sense -- or are needed! -- when
one is *accessing* data (producing a single result), not when one is
*matching* (producing multiple possible results). Both are valid
functions for the RFC. Thus it would be perfectly reasonable to
document that the default for "yi" is "Hebr" when accessing, but
"yi-Hebr" does mean something different than "yi", because "yi-Hebr"
excludes those documents that are Yiddish but written in language, and
"yi" doesn't. Farshtey?

> We return: What is the difference between az and
> az-AZ?

I am not asking for "az-AZ" with any of these registrations, so that
is off topic.

Märk Davis
________
mark.davis at jtcsv.com
IBM, MS 50-2/B11, 5600 Cottle Rd, SJ CA 95193
(408) 256-3148
fax: (408) 256-0799

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Everson" <everson at evertype.com>
To: "Mark Davis" <mark.davis at jtcsv.com>; <ietf-languages at iana.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 15:57
Subject: Re: FW: LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORMS


> At 15:44 -0700 2003-04-30, Mark Davis wrote:
> >The RFC does not specify *any* script for, say, "az". That means
that
> >in language matching, it will pick up *any* Azeri; Cyrillic, Latin,
> >Arabic, whatever. If you want to be able to select out only
Cyrillic
> >Azeri, then there has to be a code for that.
>
> I rejected yi-Hebr because it was the default. Peter Edberg proposed
> that we devise a table of defaults.
>
> >For resource lookup, it makes sense for an ISO-639 code to have a
> >"default" script. But for language matching, one of the principal
> >functions of the RFC, you need to have both the "overall" tag, plus
> >each of the variants.
>
> Then we are screwed and there will be no end of duplicate referents,
> and I really dislike that. :-( I do not think we should have
> duplicate referents. We return: What is the difference between az
and
> az-AZ?
>
> I am a strong believer in one entity, one code.
> -- 
> Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com
>



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