LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM (Newspeak)

Thor Kottelin thor.kottelin at elisa.fi
Mon Jun 2 21:33:01 CEST 2003


> Gumming up the registry with all possible idiolects is a Bad Thing.

If a language variant can be defined, and especially if there is evidence of
widespread and long-term use thereof, surely it should be registered upon
request.

Jargon has been shown to differ considerably between different parts of the
city I live in. Some terms even have different definitions depending on
whether they are used in a western or in an eastern suburb. I would
therefore go as far as to say that tags such as e.g. fi-helsinki-west and
fi-helsinki-east could be useful for a locally oriented site when performing
content negotiation. Obviously there is a chicken-and-egg problem involved;
if tags are registered sparingly, their use will remain limited, and the
interest to register new tags will remain minor. In the absence of relevant
registered tags, web site authors and operators will be reluctant to take
the trouble of setting up content negotiation.

Should the current registry, despite the practically unlimited namespace it
has at its disposal, currently be nearing capacity, it should probably take
steps to develop into a hierarchy, like centrally maintained hosts files
were superseded by the DNS.

Thor


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