Pending requests

[Doug Ewell]

Philip Newton wrote:

>>> I'm indifferent as to whether one should add a variant subtag for
>>> "Ogden Basic English", but if added, the subtag must *not* be
>>> "basiceng", as that would certainly be interpreted as some/any kind
>>> of "simplified English". "ogden”, "ogdeneng" would be fine.
>>
>> Interpreted by whom? The parameters for the subtags are given in the
>> proposals which are archived by IANA.
>
> By users who do not read the IANA submissions before using a tag they
> saw and think fits their use case.
> [...]
> You can't completely prevent people from doing stuff they do not
> understand, but sometimes the potential for mistaken use can be
> lessened by the choice of term.

This is a delicate balance. It was intended that users would pay 
attention to the other fields in the Registry, such as Description and 
Prefix, in order to understand what a tag or subtag means and how to 
create their own. But we know many users can't be bothered with reading 
the instructions, so it doesn't hurt to make the Subtag value somewhat 
mnemonic.

At the same time, we have often been bogged down in "beauty contests" 
trying to pick the perfect subtag value, usually a futile task 
especially with an 8-character limit.

Backing up a bit...

> A bit like people who see "de-DE, fr-FR, it-IT" and then produce
> "jp-JP (or ja-JA), en-EN" and similar tags.

A bit. This is more a matter of reading BCP 47, which seems like a 
difficult (not just lengthy) effort to many. Even Don Osborn said he 
"got lost in the wording of RFC 5646," in a section I thought was 
relatively straightforward.

--
Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO 🇺🇸