A proposed solution for descriptions

[Peter Constable]

+1

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Mark Davis
> Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 9:08 PM
> To: Addison Phillips
> Cc: ietf-languages at iana.org; John Cowan
> Subject: Re: A proposed solution for descriptions
> 
> I agree with Addison. I'll go a bit further. The goal is to have
> enough of a description to distinguish the language from others.
> That's the goal. It should not be a goal to have a gazillion
> languages, nor does the representation need to capture all the
> possible variations in spelling or punctuation.
> 
> Mark
> 
> On 6/19/06, Addison Phillips <addison at yahoo-inc.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I don't support changing any letters in the registry. Personally:
> > > > I think we're best off if we just replicate whatever the
> > > ISO MA sends
> > > > to us. Even when different ISO MAs send us something
> > > different for the
> > > > "same thing" (as with N'Ko). If "we" have a problem with it---tell
> > > > *them* and let them work it out.
> > >
> > > Well and good, but searching for "N'Ko" in the registry with either
> > > grep or Google will find nothing at all.  I don't think that's
> > > an acceptable state of affairs.
> > >
> > So my weasel words come into play here: I don't support *changing* any
> > *letters* in the registry. Apostrophe vs. right-single-quote I don't
> have
> > such a problem with (and I +1ed a proposed record yesterday to that
> effect).
> > Admittedly, right there I cite N'Ko. In that case, I think putting the
> ASCII
> > apostrophe into one description will not cause the planet to spin off
> its
> > axis. We should be vaguely smart about this, not so rigid that we cannot
> > make good decisions. But changing Cote d'etc. we should forget. And I
> don't
> > believe that it would be *that* bad if temporarily we put the curly
> quote in
> > the registry. If someone feels gipped, they can propose an additional
> > description for registration (problem solved). But as a general policy:
> >
> > 1. Register whatever ISO 639 (etc.) send us, exactly as they send it
> > (possibly unbundling multiple names, ala the Old Slavonics)
> > 2. Register additional descriptions via the consensus process (that's
> what
> > it is for), separately.
> >
> > Frankly, I'll be happiest when we can go to a pure text representation.
> Most
> > user agents, tools, search engines, etc. can deal with searching plain
> text
> > given the encoding.
> >
> > Addison
> >
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> >
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