[Suppress-Script] Initial list of 300 languages

[Randy Presuhn]

Hi -

> From: "McDonald, Ira" <imcdonald at sharplabs.com>
> To: "'Randy Presuhn'" <randy_presuhn at mindspring.com>; <ietf-languages at iana.org>
> Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 9:23 AM
> Subject: RE: [Suppress-Script] Initial list of 300 languages 
>
> > Randy Presuhn wrote:
> > 
> > Since the entire motivation for "Suppress-Script" is
> > compatibility with information that has already been tagged,
> > I suggest we limit ourselves, at least for the present time,
> > to cases where we *know* that substantial amounts of data
> > have already been tagged without a script subtag.
> 
> It is disturbing that our co-chair of LTRU WG still completely
> misunderstands the purpose and usage of Suppress-Script.
> 
> For the long-term future, when tagging documents, Suppress-Script
> MUST continue to be honored, in order to ensure compatibility
> with application software (e.g., word processors) and embedded 
> software (e.g., firmware in network printers).

It's clear I wasn't sufficiently clear; we have no disagreement that
Suppress-Script is necessary and not some "transitional" mechanism.
The context of my comment was the discussion of adding Suppress-
Script information to the registry, not on how the information is used.
My point is that Suppress-Script is only needed for registry entries for
a tag which has already seen enough use for their to be legacy data
to worry about, and the overwhelming bulk of the tagged material
employs the same script.  If there is little or no material (at this time)
with a given tag, there is little or no need to add the Suppress-Script
information, unless you're planning to use pre-3066bis tag-aware
applications to process future material.

> No network printer now in existence currently supports 'script'
> subtags.  If you send a document (e.g., PostScript) to a network
> printer with an external language tag of 'en-Latn-US' (e.g., in 
> the IPP 'document-natural-language' attribute), you're going to be 
> sadly surprised to have it rejected entirely or else rendered per 
> that printer's default natural language (e.g., 'ru', Russian), 
> that is to say with some very odd-looking glyphs.
...

This is an example of a tag already in use, and consequently a case
where the use of Suppress-Script needs to be decided.

Randy