Anomaly in upcoming registry
Doug Ewell
doug at ewellic.org
Mon Jun 29 04:48:21 CEST 2009
Mark Davis <mark at macchiato dot com> wrote:
> In the registry, we have 'sh' as Deprecated. Once we update to 639-3
> with the new registry and version of BCP 47, I think it will be time
> to fix this, removing the "Deprecated" field from 'sh'. I'll plan on
> submitting a Registration Form to that end.
This was largely intentional in draft-4645bis, because the code element
was deprecated in (or withdrawn from, they use both terms) ISO 639-1.
Part of it may have been a side effect of overlooking the change from
RFC 4646, where a Deprecated field in the Registry could never be
removed, to draft-4646bis, where it can.
Quoting from the ISO 639-2 change page:
"This code was deprecated in 2000 because there were separate language
codes for each individual language represented (Serbian, Croatian, and
then Bosnian was added). It was published in a revision of ISO 639-1,
but never was included in ISO 639-2. It is considered a macrolanguage
(general name for a cluster of closely related individual languages) in
ISO 639-3. Its deprecated status was reaffirmed by the ISO 639 JAC in
2005."
The real anomaly, then, is within ISO 639, in which:
part 1 includes the 2-letter code element but deprecates it,
part 3 includes the 3-letter code element and does not deprecate it, and
part 2 does not include the 3-letter code element at all.
In draft-4646bis we are adding ISO 639-3 to the list of source
standards, not necessarily replacing ISO 639-1 and -2. At least I can't
find any text in draft-4646bis to the effect that -3 trumps -1 and -2 in
case of conflicts. So to me, it is not clear whether this subtag should
be left alone (following part 1 but not part 3) or should be
un-deprecated (following part 3 but not part 1). It certainly isn't
patently obvious to me that this is a bug in the draft-4645bis Registry
that needs to be fixed.
--
Doug Ewell * Thornton, Colorado, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14
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