Summary: de-DE-1996 is better than de-1996-DE

[Peter_Constable@sil.org]

On 04/30/2002 08:05:35 AM Michael Everson wrote:

>Please give a clear and unambiguous "I prefer X" and indicate whether
>you can live with the other or not.

Sorry, I've not been able to follow much email for several days.

In view of other's comments, I will say that I have no preference and can
live with either.

I will also come away from this discussion being persuaded that any attempt
to assign significance to position classes in IETF language tags (apart
from the source for 2- or 3-letter primary subtags and the source for
2-letter secondary subtags) to be a lost cause. For me, this implies all
the more the importance of documenting precisely what the denotation of any
tag is, including consideration of the issues I discuss in terms of types
of language-related categories; and it also convinces me that RFC 3066 has
a significant weakness in that, while it sanctions iso639-iso3166
combinations without reguiring registration, it does not specify anything
in regard to such combinations in the absense of specific registrations.
Thus, if you encounter data tagged as (say) zh-CA, you'll know that it has
something to do with Chinese, and something to do with Canada, but not a
wit more, and therefore in relation to a number of processes, you won't
really have a clue what can be done with it; i.e., the tag doesn't do a
whole lot of good.



>Doing my best,

Appreciated.


- Peter


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Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>