[Ltru] status of RFC 3066 or RFC 3066bis in relation to HTTPAccept-Language

[Peter Constable]

> From: Ned Freed [mailto:ned.freed at mrochek.com]

MC> > Typically, these matters are handled on an ad-hoc case-by-case
basis in
> > which common sense prevails.
> 
> > The razor in this case is "does something break?"  

...

> > Hence the answer that since RFC abcd normatively refers to RFC efgh,
it is
> > RFC efgh that is used by an RFC abcd implementator.  It is, however,
> > expected that people would tend to use RFC ijkl instead (if only
because
> > it has clearer wording and represents more modern understanding) --
and
> > sooner or later, RFC abcd will be obsoleted by a RFC mnop that makes
this
> > change official.
> 
> > Equally important is that RFC ijkl should not have been approved for
> > publication if it creates an incompatibility problem in RFC abcd,
without
> > also updating/obsoleting RFC abcd.
> 
> Full agreement on all points.

This still leaves things somewhat vague wrt the specific question I
asked. You're saying that technically RFC 1766 is still the spec for
Accept-Language, but it's expected that people will actually use 3066bis
-- and as for "sooner or later", RFC 2616 was published in 1999, and RFC
3066 was published in 2001, so we've already had five years go by during
which 2616 could have been obsoleted by another doc that normatively
referenced 3066 but that hasn't happened.

If I needed to give a recommendation to a team that has to deal with
Accept-Language, it's really unclear to me which Language-Tag RFC I
should point them to.



Peter Constable