Script codes in RFC 3066

[Michael Everson]

At 13:47 -0400 2003-04-09, Martin Duerst wrote:

>- What is the current status of 15924, and expected date of completion?

It should soon be sent for FDIS ballot.

>   Does it allow for registrations?

Not yet.

>Why doesn't it include Hans and Hant from the start,

Because we have not yet achieved universal consensus on what to do, have we?

>and how quickly can they be added?

I am not sure about that. The RA

>   I have searched for 15924 on www.iso.ch, but didn't find
>   anything. From http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso15924/policies.html,
>   it seems that it's still in committee draft status. Maybe that
>   page needs to be updated.

Sigh.

>   http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso15924/document/fdis15924.pdf
>   suggests that it is in FDIS stage.

The document is ready to be sent for FDIS, once TC46 secretariat is 
happy about another little bit of bureauracy.

>   The recent rejection of a special tag for indicating 'Yiddish written
>   in Hebrew' is another good datapoint. There is really no need at all
>   to say that Yiddish is written in Hebrew, because that's obvious
>   unless there is information to the contrary.

That wasn't proposed, so I didn't reject it. I would have, though.

>- You say '[RFC 3066 registration] can take quite a while'.
>   If you don't hear from the reviewer
>   within two weeks, send a (gentle!) reminder message. If you still
>   don't hear from him, send another (again gentle) reminder. If the
>   registration is approved by the reviewer, but doesn't turn up at
>   IANA after some time, send an inquiry/reminder (again gentle) to
>   IANA.

Thanks, Martin. :-)

(I wonder should I start taking bribes.)

>- For registering only zh-Hant (and not zh-Hans), although it is
>   clear that in terms of numbers, more Chinese are using simplified,
>   I don't think we should let zh just stand for simplified, because
>   in that case, we would not have a code for expressing Chinese
>   independent of scripts. I'm not familiar enough with az, uz, and
>   sr to judge whether there is enough of a dominance for one script
>   to just register the other.

And here is where the whole panoply of Han choices needs to be REALLY 
well understood and discussed.
-- 
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com