<br><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I wonder if there is, or is going to be, a public forum to discuss ISO<br>639-3 and its structure and policies. This list really isn't it; we
<br>take what the external standards give us, and synthesize and arrange.<br>We don't directly influence what the external standards do, though there<br>are list members who can do so indirectly.</blockquote><div><br>
That would be very useful. We are very dependent on the interpretation of the codes. In particular, there is a key item that we need a response for, and that is the temporal scope of ISO language codes. For example, we have french broken up into fr, frm, and fro, plus various creoles. So tagging old French data with fr is incorrect, and requesting a variant subtag to apply to fr to indicate French of say (1100-1200) is out of scope and will be legitimately rejected.
<br><br>For most other languages, on the other hand, <span style="font-style: italic;">we do not have that granularity</span>. So that means what a document that is tagged with cs (Czech) represents is completely unspecified. We do not know what the !#$@ to do with a request. We are faced with an unknown situation which the ISO committee doesn't respond to.
<br><br>Assume that old Czech is as different from modern as fro is from fr. There are the following two alternatives:<br><ol><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">The subtag 'cs' means any Czech, modern or old, and therefore
</span> </li><ol><li>cs can legitimately be used to tag a document with old Czech.</li><li>a request for a variant-subtag applying to cs indicating old Czech is perfectly reasonable, and SHOULD be granted.<br></li><li>ISO can only add another subtag that means old Czech if cs is treated as a metalanguage, since otherwise that would invalidate old subtags.
<br></li></ol><li style="font-weight: bold;">The subtag 'cs mean only modern Czech, and therefore</li><ol><li>cs cannot be correctly used to tag a document with old Czech, so the only recourse is to use a private use code or 'und'.
</li><li>a request for a variant-subtag applying to cs indicating old Czech is illegitimate, and MUST not be granted.</li><li>ISO can and should add a different subtag that means old Czech</li></ol></ol></div>I've requested a response from the JAC (through Peter Constable on Jan 11) to clarify this, but have gotten nothing. His opinion was number 2, which seems reasonable, but we really have to know what the situation is for RFC 4646bis!
<br><br>Mark<br></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Mark