Request for variant subtag: western

[Doug Ewell]

For personal reasons, I haven't been able to keep up with the flood of 
mails on this topic over the last two days.  I apologize for any lack of 
perspective that results.

Mark Davis <mark dot davis at icu dash project dot org> wrote:

> Comments: According to the specification, this subtag must
>   only be used with the prefixes listed. When multiple
>   prefixes are present, bear in mind that each is a distinct
>   dialect of the respective language.

I'm strongly opposed to this type of long, generic comment being 
attached to a variant subtag record.  The rules stated here apply 
equally to all variants and can be readily found in the RFC.  I don't 
see any benefit to repeating the rules for usage in one particular 
subtag, as though they applied more in this case than for, say, "1901".

Besides which, the specification does NOT say that a given variant must 
only be used with the prefixes listed.  It says the prefixes listed 
represent combinations that would be "suitable" or "meaningful" or 
"appropriate."  We may wish to strengthen this in 3066ter, but that is 
not what is written in 3066bis.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California, USA
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
Editor, draft-ietf-ltru-initial