WO's learning curve (was Re: en-GB-oxford LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM)

[Peter_Constable at sil.org]

William Overington wrote on 05/30/2003 10:03:36 AM:

> Do you know, I have no idea as to what is an RFC and I have no idea where
to
> find it so that I could read it.  I am on a learning curve with this as
with
> many other matters

This list is not intended for learning about language tagging; it is
intended first for working discussions on registrations as sanctioned by
RFC 3066, and secondly for issues related to possible revisions of the RFC.
Contributors are assumed at least to be familiar with the specification,
and also have some understanding of appropriate usage for tags defined by
this specification.


> Could someone possibly say please?

Like, could you possibly say, "I'm interested in this topic, but just new
to it; could somebody please point me to relevant documents I would need to
read to get up to speed."

I'm going to be nice and give you references rather than leaving you to
find it all out on your own, like most of the rest of us had to do:

First, read the RFC:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt?number=3066

When you're done with that, I suggest you familiarise yourself with ISO 639

http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/iso639jac.html

with ISO 3166

http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/index.html

and with ISO 15924

http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso15924/

and also read the paper at

http://www.sil.org/silewp/2000/001/

the two docs mentioned at

http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn8/

the paper at

ftp://text:ftp2apple@tondero.apple.com/LocaleNotes-Tags-2pke.pdf

the papers at

http://oss.software.ibm.com/cvs/icu/~checkout~/icuhtml/design/language_code_
issues.html
http://oss.software.ibm.com/cvs/icu/~checkout~/icuhtml/design/jit_localizati
on.html

and also those portions of the XML spec that relate to use of xml:lang,

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml

those portions of the html spec that relate to the use of the lang
attribute and the use of lang in relation to metadata,

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/

and those portions of the HTTP spec that relate to the use of
accept-language

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt?number=2616

For good measure, read up on the use of LANGIDs and LCIDs in Win32, and on
the .Net CultureInfo class in MSDN Library

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp

and perhaps also familiarize yourself with ISO 14652 and ISO 15987 (for
what they're worth)

http://anubis.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC22/WG20/




> However, the fact remains that, regardless of what people sat in
committees
> have decreed in one of their documents, Oxford is a city in England and
the
> name is spelled with a capital letter.

Completely irrelevant. Read the RFC.


BTW, I expect you'll find there is far less tolerance for off-topic
discussion here than on the Unicode list.



- Peter


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485