> FTR, I *still* think that allowing generative subtags was a mistake from<br>the start (made in ISO 646, adopted by RFC 1766, for which I am solidly to<br>blame)<br><br>I think you sell yourself short. An assessment of whether a feature was a success really depends on whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. And by that account, your choice of a generative mechanism has been a great success; there are very few problems with it in practice, and it has proved to be an extremely valuable tool in the identification of language in software.
<br><br>> And I thought the purpose of 4646 was to update 3066 to give a sensible<br>handling of the script tags.<br><br>That was one purpose, and a valuable one. But only one of many major improvements. To repeat from
<a href="http://www.inter-locale.com/ID/why-rfc3066bis.html">http://www.inter-locale.com/ID/why-rfc3066bis.html</a> :<br><p style="margin-left: 40px;">RFC 3066bis addresses a number of issues that
implementers of language tags have faced in recent years:</p>
<ul style="margin-left: 40px;"><li>Stability of the underlying ISO standards</li><li>Accessibility of the underlying ISO standards for implementers</li><li>Ambiguity of the tags defined by these ISO standards</li><li>Difficulty with registrations and their acceptance
</li><li>Identification of script where necessary</li><li>Extensibility</li></ul><br>Mark<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 12/13/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Harald Alvestrand</b> <<a href="mailto:harald@alvestrand.no">
harald@alvestrand.no</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br><br>--On 13. desember 2006 09:56 -0800 Mark Davis <
<a href="mailto:mark.davis@icu-project.org">mark.davis@icu-project.org</a>><br>wrote:<br><br>> The main point I was trying to make is that with generative tags people<br>> can form combinations that (a) are meaningful, and (b) don't require
<br>> registration. That is the whole purpose of RFC4646. We explicitly don't<br>> weed out the empty combinations like en-Cyrl-AQ, because as long as the<br>> meaning of the subtags is well-defined, it is interchangeable.
<br><br>And I thought the purpose of 4646 was to update 3066 to give a sensible<br>handling of the script tags. I guess I missed something.<br><br>FTR, I *still* think that allowing generative subtags was a mistake from<br>
the start (made in ISO 646, adopted by RFC 1766, for which I am solidly to<br>blame), and that generative script subtags was a mistake squared. The<br>suppress-script scheme is a means of undoing some of the damage from<br>
generative subtags.<br><br>I'd hate to go for the mistake cubed.<br><br>[BTW, another set of generative subtags should be a policy matter, not a<br>registration matter. Take it to the ltru list.]<br><br> harald<br>
<br><br></blockquote></div><br>