Here comes the Yiddish

Doug Ewell dewell@adelphia.net
Sun, 1 Dec 2002 11:13:18 -0800


Sean M. Burke <sburke at cpan dot org> wrote:

>> By defining 4-letter second subtags to be script codes, in some
>> future revision to RFC 3066, it would become unnecessary to register
>> special tags like yi-hebr and yi-latn.  This situation will come up
>> again and again (e.g. az-Cyrl and az-Latn).
>
> So if I wait for the Sweet By And By From The ISO In The Sky, then
> yi-hebr and yi-latn will automatically be known to make sense, and
> will be understood to mean what I mean by them?

ISO doesn't control what goes into RFCs.  I'm thinking that RFC 3066
could be revised to mention the use of ISO 15924 script codes even
before that standard is published.

The codes themselves might change, before or after publication of ISO
15924, just as the ISO 639 language codes and ISO 3166 country codes
already referenced in RFC 3066 can and do change.  Hebr and Latn seem
unlikely to change, but of course anything is possible.  Implementations
based on the FDIS probably have a good chance of getting the
architecture right and less than 100% chance of getting all of the codes
right.

A copy of DIS (not FDIS) 15924 is available at:

http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso15924/document/dis15924.pdf

although that document is ambivalent about the code for Myanmar (Burm or
Mymr), and includes codes for combinations of scripts used in Japanese
that may not be in the final standard.  But it could still be useful for
determining feasibility and designing prototypes for the use of script
codes in language tags.

Didn't the original text of RFC 3066 mention script codes?  Was that
language removed from the final RFC because the standard wasn't
published, or was there some other reason?

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California