Ietf-languages Digest, Vol 74, Issue 1

[John Cowan]

Anthony Aristar scripsit:

> Well, it's interesting to know the background for this set.  But it
> raises a recurrent issue  for ISO standards.  More than once in the
> past I've seen a standard promulgated;  yet the explanation for the
> oddities of that standard are known only to those who happen to be in
> a select group.

Oh dear.

I hastily add that I am absolutely not on any inside track for ISO itself.
The fact that ISO 639-5 is a superset of ISO 639-2 is a patent fact,
no inside knowledge required.  And although I am a BCP 47 (RFC 4646)
insider, that's a self-selected rather than a select group -- anyone
with an Internet connection can become an insider who's willing to learn
and participate.

So I really don't know what the ISO purpose of 639-5 is meant to be.
I can speak only to the purpose of including its code elements in BCP 47.

-- 
My corporate data's a mess!                     John Cowan
It's all semi-structured, no less.              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
    But I'll be carefree                        cowan at ccil.org
    Using XSLT
On an XML DBMS.