FW: LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORMS

[Addison Phillips [wM]]

Michael,

I think I understand your point that the ISO639 value identifies some sort
of default. I suppose that, for example, one might make a statement about
Serbian or Uzbek in that regard, in which case the base (639) value might be
declared to *mean* Cyrillic (or Latin, or whatever). Then would the other
values get registered and become "the tag for that language written in
script X"?

Can this argument really be applied neatly to Chinese? Is "Traditional" the
default? Or "Simplified"? The list of languages were requested for
registration, I believe, because they represent either transitional or edge
cases that the basic system doesn't address. There is no point to
registering (for example) fr-Latn because it is understood that French is
not customarily written in some other script. The yi example is probably a
similar case. These represent languages that are customarily written in two
ways which are either a) across one or more borders and thus not distinct
(solely) via the ISO3166 code or b) co-existing in a single country (in
which case the 3166 code is no use in disentangling them).

Second, you ask:

> We return: What is the difference between az and az-AZ?

Why should the generative mechanism be considered to cause a problem here?
Consider these:

  cs-CZ, be-BY, da-DK, iw-IL, sv-SE, sk-SK

How are these different from cs, be, da, iw, sv, and sk individually? The
generative mechanism in 3066 already has created some "single
entity/multiple code" problems.

Since Azeri fits this pattern, let's look at it. I'm not sure what the
az/az-AZ duality has to do with the registration of az-Latn (for example)?
Are you saying that someone should register az-Latn-AZ [etc.] (to make the
pattern complete)? Or are you saying that az-Latn/az-Cyrl/az-Arab are not
valid values for registration becuase az and az-AZ actually mean
(az==az-Cyrl) && (az-AZ==az-Latn)?

Addison

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no
> [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no]On Behalf Of Michael
> Everson
> Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 3:58 PM
> To: Mark Davis; ietf-languages at iana.org
> Subject: Re: FW: LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORMS
>
>
> At 15:44 -0700 2003-04-30, Mark Davis wrote:
> >The RFC does not specify *any* script for, say, "az". That means that
> >in language matching, it will pick up *any* Azeri; Cyrillic, Latin,
> >Arabic, whatever. If you want to be able to select out only Cyrillic
> >Azeri, then there has to be a code for that.
>
> I rejected yi-Hebr because it was the default. Peter Edberg proposed
> that we devise a table of defaults.
>
> >For resource lookup, it makes sense for an ISO-639 code to have a
> >"default" script. But for language matching, one of the principal
> >functions of the RFC, you need to have both the "overall" tag, plus
> >each of the variants.
>
> Then we are screwed and there will be no end of duplicate referents,
> and I really dislike that. :-( I do not think we should have
> duplicate referents. We return: What is the difference between az and
> az-AZ?
>
> I am a strong believer in one entity, one code.
> --
> Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com
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