Registered sgn-* tags

[Doug Ewell]

Michael Everson <everson at evertype dot com> wrote:

>> What we need here is a way to register -- not necessarily generate --
>> tags for the sign languages, and signed spoken languages, that
>> Michael wants to represent.
>
> And we need to do it using the scheme developed in 2001.

Why does it absolutely *have* to use that particular scheme?

> I expect that the scheme developed in 2001 will be valid for sgn-
> tags. I hope that the framers of 3066bis will be reasonable about
> this.

This is not a truly generative mechanism, even if it looks like one.
There are 3 possible syntaxes; two cannot be distinguished from one
another in practice, and the third is not valid under any
language-tagging RFC.

There definitely needs to be a way to express all of these sign and
signed-spoken languages, but it will probably involve extended language
subtags or variant subtags.  (Isn't that what they're for?)

Or, I suppose you could register everything on sgn.html, *really really
quickly*, before RFC 3066 is replaced.  Then they would have to be
grandfathered in.  (Just a thought.)

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