Preferred Values for Irregular Tags

[Mark Davis ☕]

A general comment; we don't particularly have a "rage for order" - if some
of these things are ill-defined, then we'd be perfectly happy
with Deprecated. For any of them that are actually useful, we'd like a
regular language tag.

Mark


On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 09:08, John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:

> Mark Davis â?? scripsit:
>
> > %%
> > Type: grandfathered
> > Tag: cel-gaulish
> > Description: Gaulish
> > Added: 2001-05-25
> > ***Preferred-Value: xtg // most likely Gaulish being meant
>
> Someone should probably ask ISO 639-3 for a macrolanguage code element
> covering Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaulish.
>

Sounds reasonable.


>
> > %%
> > Type: grandfathered
> > Tag: en-GB-oed
> > Description: English, Oxford English Dictionary spelling
> > Added: 2003-07-09
> > ***Preferred-Value: en-oxedict // with proposed new variant
>
> I understand rage for order, but I'm not sure this is worth changing.
> It's a highly specialized tag with very little usage, and if we replace
> it, the replacement will have even less.
>

I don't want to make any suppositions about value or usage - I'm sure that
among the 8K primary language subtags, there are probably dozens (hundreds?
thousands?) with less usage.


>
> > %%
> > Type: grandfathered
> > Tag: i-default
> > Description: Default Language
> > Added: 1998-03-10
> > ***Preferred-Value: und // I doubt that this group would approve this,
> but
> > it is probably what we'll map to, so just FYI
>
> "en" would be a more sensible mapping, given that RFC 2277 requires that
> i-default text be understandable by anglophones.
>

Oh, boy, that is wild! Based on that RFC (
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2277.txt), it really is a special purpose variant
of English.
"Messages in Default Language MUST be understandable by an English-speaking
person, since English is the language which, worldwide, the greatest number
of people will be able to get adequate help in interpreting when working
with computers.
"
Maybe the best choice would be to define a variant tag: en-idefault.

>
> > %%
> > Type: grandfathered
> > Tag: i-enochian
> > Description: Enochian
> > Added: 2002-07-03
> > ***Preferred-Value: xxx // Ask for new code from 639-3. This is a bizarre
> > invented language, but there is precedent for invented languages.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > %%
> > Type: grandfathered
> > Tag: i-mingo
> > Description: Mingo
> > Added: 1997-09-19
> > ***Preferred-Value: see-mingo // Ask for new variant from this group
>
> Agreed.
>
> > %%
> > Type: grandfathered
> > Tag: zh-min
> > Description: Min, Fuzhou, Hokkien, Amoy, or Taiwanese
> > Added: 1999-12-18
> > Deprecated: 2009-07-29
> > ***Preferred-Value: nan // since nan includes Min Chinese
>
> Vice versa: nan is a subtype of Min Chinese.  This is a useless stub
> and should just be left alone (see above on "rage for order").
>

If it is not ill-defined, then the best course would be to have a regular
code for it. (see above under 'usage').


>
> --
> John Cowan              cowan at ccil.org          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> Historians aren't constantly confronted with people who carry on
> self-confidently about the rule against adultery in the sixth amendment to
> the Declamation of Independence, as written by Benjamin Hamilton. Computer
> scientists aren't always having to correct people who make bold assertions
> about the value of Objectivist Programming, as examplified in the HCNL
> entities stored in Relaxational Databases.  --Mark Liberman
>
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