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

[Dave Singer]

I'm sorry, this example I gave doesn't correspond to *language* 
matching.  My error. My apologies.

(Nor should my questions on this subject be seen as suggesting either 
that I as an individual, or particularly Apple as a company, is 
unhappy revising RFC 3066.)


At 12:35 PM -0800 1/6/05, Dave Singer wrote:
>At 12:14 PM -0800 1/6/05, Peter Constable wrote:
>>  > From: Dave Singer [mailto:singer at apple.com]
>>
>>>  Sorry, I should have gone on to conclude:  the important aspect of
>>>  sub-tags is that their nature and purpose be identifiable and
>>>  explained (e.g. that this is a country code), and that we retain
>>>  compatibility with previous specifications.
>>
>>Ah! Then the proposed draft ensures that the nature of subtags are
>>always identifiable, which RFC 3066 (as I mentioned earlier) fails to
>>do.
>>
>>And the draft retains compatibility with previous specifications using
>>an assumption (thoroughly discussed and concluded on the IETF-languages
>>list a year ago) that, in case of left-prefix matching processes, script
>>distinctions are generally far more important that country distinctions.
>
>as has been beautifully pointed out on the list, that is a view that 
>is lingo-centric.  If what I am trying to differentiate is the price 
>(and the currency of the price) of an item, the country may be much 
>more important than the script that the price is written in.  (this 
>is also an example for the last point below).  I repeat, I don't 
>think truncation -- and hence prefix-matching -- is very stable or 
>nearly universally applicable enough to be mentioned.  Whereas I do 
>believe compatibility of ordering with 3066 is important.
>
>>
>>>  I don't believe that simple
>>>  truncation is a necessarily useful operation in all circumstances,
>>
>>I don't think anyone would dispute that.
>>
>>>  and it probably should not be in the spec. at all.  For example, I'd
>>>  say that we should retain the 3066 ordering of language-country and
>>>  therefore script, if needed, comes later.  However, my typesetting
>>>  subsystem doesn't care a jot about language or country, it just needs
>>>  to find the script code ('can I render this script'?).
>>
>>Here I disagree. For other purposes, I think it's very clear that the
>>only time that choice of order matters is with matching algorithms that
>>use simple truncation, and for the most common implementations, which
>>use left-prefix truncation, the order lang-script-country will be far
>>more useful in the long run precisely because script distinctions are
>>generally far more important in matching than country distinctions. I
>>don't know of any case in which a tag might be used that contained all
>>three subtags but in which the country distinction generally matters
>>more than the script distinction.


-- 
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime