[Fwd]: Response to Mark's message]

John Cowan jcowan at reutershealth.com
Wed Apr 9 15:52:38 CEST 2003


Mark Davis scripsit:

> I stand by what I said. The same program *must* have different text
> resources for simplified chinese and traditional chinese. It doesn't matter
> why or how they are different, but the written forms are different. ISO 639
> cannot express that difference.

That is because it is not a language difference, but what Peter is now labeling
an orthography difference (previously a writing system difference).  But
that is not to say that ISO 639 is about spoken rather than written languages;
it isn't.

> As I said, we can live with either one of these, since the bulk of computing
> requirements do not require SIL codes immediately.

In fact you could probably live with IANA registration of all the problematic
cases that actually require scripts.  All that would be needed would be a
good solid list of them with documentation, and this list can process them,
as Martin says, very quickly.

It's not like zh-hant is illegal, it's just that it requires registration
under the current regime.

-- 
A rabbi whose congregation doesn't want         John Cowan
to drive him out of town isn't a rabbi,         http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
and a rabbi who lets them do it                 jcowan at reutershealth.com
isn't a man.    --Jewish saying                 http://www.reutershealth.com


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