A quick show of hands now

[Doug Ewell]

John Clews <Scripts2 at sesame dot demon dot co dot uk> wrote:

> Does anybody else wish to record their preference, for the record?

As a non-committee member and relative newcomer, my preference would be
to skip the ad-hoc step of registering these new codes and to start
*right away* on a revision to RFC 3066 to support script code subtags on
equal footing with country code subtags.

Extending the RFC 3066 framework to include script codes in a productive
way would give people like Mark the codes they want, serve as a natural
extension to the precedent (real or perceived) set by "yi-Latn", take
the burden off the Reviewer to approve or disapprove these things, and
avoid the whole unwinnable debate over "default" scripts.

Differences in script are arguably at least as significant from a
language-identification perspective as orthographic reforms ("de-1901"
vs. "de-1996") or country-specific differences in spelling and
vocabulary ("en-US" vs. "en-IE"), as others have asserted.

Assigning codes for "sr-Latn", "sr-Cyrl" and such is a short-term
solution.  In the time it takes for Michael to disapprove Mark's
proposals formally, for Mark to start the appeals process, and for the
IESG to make its ruling, we could be well on our way to a long-term
solution that would make the short-term solution completely unnecessary.

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California
 http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/