Why alpha4 codes?

Peter Constable petercon at microsoft.com
Mon Jun 7 17:08:54 CEST 2004


[Lee replied privately, but as the content wasn't personal and relevant
for the thread, I'm assuming he meant to reply to the list.]


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lee Gillam [mailto:l.gillam at eim.surrey.ac.uk]
> Sent: Monday, June 07, 2004 7:29 AM
> To: Peter Constable
> Subject: Re: Why alpha4 codes?
> 
> 
> > > I would suggest that making an assumption of where a specific code
> > > of any length originates from is somewhat flawed. For the XML
> > community
> > > I would expect namespaces to be used for such purposes.
> >
> > I entirely agree. For XML, the xml:lang namespace is RFC 3066 (or,
> > potentially, its successors). In that namespace, alpha-4 sub-tags
are to
> > have particular semantics, that of ISO 15924.
> 
> I think you're putting the cart in front of the horse there. The
section
> labelled as script is declared as alpha-4 from 15924. Does that
prevent
> using alpha-4 (if I read the ABNF right) in registered-lang? If that
were
> the logic, each component would need a different length.

An alpha-4 ID in registered-lang should be OK. But something like
"cy-cyde" absolutely is not.


Peter
 
Peter Constable
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
Microsoft Windows Division


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