draft-phillips-langtags-08, process, specifications, "stability", and extensions

[Peter Constable]

> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of ned.freed at mrochek.com

> In any case, the recurring issue with country codes is simply this:
Anyone who
> wants to process them as such who based their code on 3066 and who
didn't use
> tables wrote code that treated the second subtag and the second subtag
only as
> a country code. The new specification changes this principle, and that
breaks
> implementations done in good faith to the old specification, in the
process
> potentially creating interop problems.

It is valid to say the implementations done in good faith to the old
specification would not be able to recognize a country code in any
position other than second subtag. 

It is *not* valid to say that this breaks those implementations, as they
continue to perform their functions as designed whatever tags they
encounter -- that is an invalid argument against the draft. 

Whether any potential interop problems would arise from acceptance of
this draft is a matter subject to demonstration. If (and only if)
demonstrated, we may need to consider whether they represent potential
blocking issues with the draft, or merely items among the large set of
outstanding problems awaiting solutions. In particular, it is not valid
to say that failure of certain implementations to match certain pairs of
tags (such as az-AZ with az-Cyrl-AZ) is an interop problem as that
presupposes an expectation that is nowhere specified (and certainly not
found in RFC 3066) that such implementations should match such pairs.



Peter Constable