Ambiguity (Announcing draft-langtags-phillips-davis-00.txt)

[Addison Phillips [wM]]

Hi Mark,

Actually, the draft -01 does use the word "potential"...... I put it there during some of our last set of edits. To wit:

----

7. To maintain backwards compatibility, there are two provisions to account for potential instability in ISO 639, 3166, and 15924 codes. 

----

Addison

Addison P. Phillips
Director, Globalization Architecture
webMethods | Delivering Global Business Visibility
http://www.webMethods.com
Chair, W3C Internationalization (I18N) Working Group
Chair, W3C-I18N-WG, Web Services Task Force
http://www.w3.org/International

Internationalization is an architecture. 
It is not a feature.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no
> [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no]On Behalf Of Mark Davis
> Sent: Sunday, November 16, 2003 11:35 AM
> To: Doug Ewell; ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> Subject: Re: Ambiguity (Announcing draft-langtags-phillips-davis-00.txt)
> 
> 
> The world "potential" would be a good addition (unfortunately, we already
> submitted the 01 version, so it'll have to wait a bit).
> 
> There is still a problem, because there is nothing in those 
> standards (nor in
> ISO 4217) that guarantees stability, nor in the ISO policies and 
> procedures. The
> respective registration authorities have it within their power to 
> destabilize
> their codes at any time; and since we have seen it happen at 
> least once with at
> least one very important standard, it doesn't really leave us 
> with warm and
> fuzzy feelings.
> 
> This is not to say that the RAs would -- and we certainly know of 
> responsible
> people and organizations who would never take such steps. But 
> who's to say that
> their successors would not? We need something much more than 
> "they haven't done
> it yet" -- that attitude left us wide open for the change in CS!
> 
> Mark
> __________________________________
> http://www.macchiato.com
> ► शिष्यादिच्छेत्पराजयम् ◄
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Doug Ewell" <dewell at adelphia.net>
> To: <ietf-languages at alvestrand.no>
> Sent: Sun, 2003 Nov 16 11:17
> Subject: Re: Ambiguity (Announcing draft-langtags-phillips-davis-00.txt)
> 
> 
> > Addison Phillips [wM] <aphillips at webmethods dot com> quoted from
> > draft-langtags-phillips-davis-00.txt:
> >
> > > 7. To maintain backwards compatibility, there are two
> > > provisions to account for instabilities in ISO 639,
> > > 3166, and 15924 codes.
> >
> > Is this a preventive measure to account for *potential* instabilities in
> > ISO 639 and 15924?
> >
> > No assigned ISO 639 code has changed since 1989, long before the current
> > Internet usage of language codes made stability a much more important
> > issue.  And ISO 15924 is not even a published standard yet, so by
> > definition it can't have a record of instability (although its primary
> > supporters seem to be people who value stability).
> >
> > ISO 3166/MA seems to be the culprit here.  If there's a desire not only
> > to defend against potential instabilities, but also to make a point
> > about the ISO 3166 "CS" reassignment controversy, I'm not sure ISO 639
> > and 15924 should be implicated as similarly unstable standards.
> >
> > -Doug Ewell
> >  Fullerton, California
> >  http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ietf-languages mailing list
> > Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> > http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
> >
> 
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