draft-phillips-langtags-08, process, sp ecifications, "stability", and extensions

[John Cowan]

ned.freed at mrochek.com scripsit:

> > Finding country codes is straightforward: any non-initial subtag of
> > two letters (not appearing to the right of "x-" or "-x-") is a country
> > code.  This is true in RFC 1766, RFC 3066, and the current draft.
> 
> On the contrary, in RFC 3066 the rule is "any 2 letter value that
> appears as the second subtag is a country code". The rule in the new
> draft is either the formulation you give above or  "any 2 letter value
> that appears as a subtag after the initial subtag and some number of
> 3 and 4 letter subtags".

I didn't state it as a rule, but as true.  Every non-initial 2-letter
tag in RFC 3066 is a country code; the same is true in the draft.
(A private correspondent notes that the reference to "-x-" should
in fact be a reference to any singleton, though "-x-" and "i-" are
the only singletons currently usable.)

> Just because something doesn't necessarily do something doesn't mean it
> never does it.

It does mean it can't be counted on in the general case.

> Well, maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I see nothing in RFC
3066 that > qualifies as a description of a matching algorithm.

Section 2.5 (2.4.1 in the draft) states the matching rule in a succinct
fashion.  Everything in 2.4.2 is a non-normative elaboration of this.

-- 
John Cowan  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  jcowan at reutershealth.com
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