Script codes in RFC 3066

[Michael Everson]

At 21:21 +0100 2003-04-09, Caoimhin O Donnaile wrote:

>I was thinking mostly of hierarchic information above the language
>level - e.g. recording the fact that Scottish Gaelic is a Goidelic
>language, which in turn are a branch of the Celtic languages, which
>in turn are a branch of the Indo-european family.

These language tags do not try to convey this kind of information.

>I mentioned before codes for historical languages from different
>periods as eating into the codespace, as well as obsoleted codes
>as scholarship progresses, but I forgot to mention another major
>factor.  I think that the codes for nodes in the hierarchy should
>be in the same codespace, because at the lower levels opinions
>may change over time as to what is a "node" and what is a separate
>language (as in the examples above), and because it as well to keep to
>the same system for the higher levels too.

I don't see how current practice has much to do with your (very 
interesting) database idea though.
-- 
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com