New file format uses ISO 639-2 alpha-3 plus TLDs, ignores BCP 47

[Mark Davis ☕️]

I suspect the reason was simply unfamiliarity with BCP47, since that is the
standard way to represent languages (and locales).

Mark

On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 8:29 PM, Doug Ewell <doug at ewellic.org> wrote:

> Today on the IETF "Daily Dose" page, I noticed a draft for Matroska
> (draft-lhomme-cellar-matroska-00), a proposed new multimedia container
> format based on Extensible Binary Meta Language (EBML), also in draft
> form. Both are individual submissions, associated with the cellar WG.
>
> In this 220-page draft, I found the following:
>
> > 6.2.1.  Language Codes
> >
> > Language codes can be either the 3 letters bibliographic ISO-639-2
> > [13] form (like "fre" for french), or such a language code followed
> > by a dash and a country code for specialities in languages (like
> > "fre-ca" for Canadian French).  Country codes are the same as used
> > for internet domains [14].
>
> I wonder if there was some particular reason for choosing this hybrid
> approach instead of simply referencing BCP 47 and applying constraints
> as desired (e.g. "no variants or extlangs"). Among other benefits, using
> BCP 47 would provide access to many more languages (more than 8000
> instead of 485), avoid the GB/UK problem, and promote the objective of
> IETF specifications referencing other IETF specifications.
>
> What makes this all a bit strange is that EBML itself, written by two of
> the three authors of Matroska, does specify the use of RFC 5646 for
> <documentation> sub-elements.
>
> --
> Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-languages mailing list
> Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
>
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