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

[Mark Crispin]

On Fri, 24 Mar 2006, McDonald, Ira wrote:
> Precisely my point about RFC 2396 (Generic URI Syntax) and its
> successor RFC 3986.  Dozens of IETF and other standards specs
> were broken by RFC 3986 doing away with some ABNF productions
> and renaming others.

A change in names in ABNF rules doesn't change the protocol in other 
documents.  It may create a need to update the other documents, but it 
doesn't break anything.

If some document inherited syntax rules from RFC 2396 and RFC 2986 changed 
some of the names, then you have to refer to RFC 2396 to see which rule 
was intended.

A little bit of common sense goes a long way.

> Peter - I think you're on your own - and note that RFC 1766
> doesn't exactly gracefully prepare programmers for 'script'
> subtags in the second position followed by 'region' subtags
> in the third position

Sounds like a good argument to abolish script subtags, and to tell the 
people who want script identity that they are screwed, now and forever, 
and will just have to live with it because someone may be excessively 
pedantic about RFC 1766.

Or.  OR!!!!  An attempt can be made to use common sense.

There is usually both a harmful interpretation and one which is either 
harmless (or causes less harm).  Common sense would say to use the latter.

If there's a possibility that a script subtag would cause a problem, one 
should consider if it's really needed.  If it's not needed, then don't 
send it.  If it is needed, then a device which barfs on a script subtag 
couldn't have worked anyway.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.