A possible move towards consensus? (1)

John Clews Scripts2 at sesame.demon.co.uk
Sat May 24 10:39:05 CEST 2003


Here are some thoughts which have just occurred to me which might
provide one way towards resolving what are genuine difficulties put
forward by both "sides."

What about splitting the full list of basic codes registrations into
two or three different parts?

(a) The first part could list simple tags thus:

     az *
     ...
     en
     ...
     sr *
     ...
     etc.

(b) The second could list codes

     az-cyrl
     az-latn
     ...
     sr-cyrl
     sr-latn
     ...
     etc.

The asterisks in part (a) would link to the entries in part (b) of
the authoritative tag list.

Entries in (b) would either list a brief explanation below each
entry, or possibly (better) link to brief narrative explanations in a
part (c), which could describe

i.   the reasons as to when and if

     az-cyrl
     az-latn
     ...
     sr-cyrl
     sr-latn
     etc.

     should be used,

ii.  what the implications there are of using them, or not using them

iii. any specific dangers there are in using them, and

iv.  what legacy data users might encounter in different situations
     on the web etc.

It would be even more useful for users who might have to deal with

     zh
     zh-CN
     zh-TW
     zh-hans
     zh-hant
     etc.

to have such explanations of i, ii, iii, and iv.

Such comprehensive documentation would be useful for users (currently
much of it is only buried in archives of this email list).

I'm suggesting that the current lagauge tag reviewer would allocate
the tags for parts (a) and (b), and that perhaps those who are most
involved in requesting the type of tags in part (b) should offer to
write the brief explanations and guidance notes which would appear in
part (c).

Is something like this a way forward?

I look forward to people's reactions.

Best regards

John Clews

--
John Clews,
Keytempo Limited (Information Management),
8 Avenue Rd, Harrogate, HG2 7PG
Tel:    +44 1423 888 432
mobile: +44 7766 711 395
Email:  Scripts2 at sesame.demon.co.uk
Web:    http://www.keytempo.com

Committee Member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG20: Internationalization;
Committee Member of ISO/TC37/SC2/WG1: Language Codes


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