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

[Dave Singer]

>This is similar to the reason why the language code comes before the country
>code. If we had the order CH-fr, then we could end up mixing French and
>German in the same page, because we would fall back (for one of the data
>sources) from CH-fr to CH, which could be German.


It has to be application-specific which fallback happens.  If the 
user says he's swiss french, and the the content has alternative 
offers for swiss german or french french, which do you present?  If 
the content actually differs for legal or geographic reasons ('the 
legal representative in your country is', 'for copyright reasons this 
edition differs in material ways from other countries'), then the 
correct country but wrong language is the best answer.  If the desire 
is simply for maximum intelligibility, then the reverse is true.
-- 
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime