The ISO 3166 code CS

Addison Phillips [wM] aphillips at webmethods.com
Tue Aug 5 10:29:57 CEST 2003


John Cowan wrote:
> Addison Phillips [wM] scripsit:
> 
> 
>>The implication is that 'cz-CS' (an old code) and 'sr-CS' (a new code) 
>>apply to different countries. As a result, implementations that parse 
>>the language and country apart for reference purposes have to apply 
>>special rules to each of the values cited: the code means something else 
>>depending on the context in which you are viewing it. 
> 
> 
> This is already true.  For example, en-us entails a certain orthography,
> whereas es-us (equally legitimate) does not.
> 
Yes, but there is a difference. The "US" in both of those tags still 
means the same thing.
The tag as a whole has different meaning and level of "validity". The CS 
in my two examples means something completely different. When the 
subtag's meaning is dependent on its context and the context can be 
ambiguous, then the subtags have lost at least some of their usefulness.

Yes, we can survive this episode: I'm busily plumbing the appropriate 
logic into my
rfc3066 processor this morning. But I'd be happier to see some other 
solution.

Addison

-- 
Addison P. Phillips
Director, Globalization Architecture
webMethods, Inc.

+1 408.962.5487  mailto:aphillips at webmethods.com
-------------------------------------------
Internationalization is an architecture. It is not a feature.

Chair, W3C I18N WG Web Services Task Force
http://www.w3.org/International/ws




More information about the Ietf-languages mailing list