draft-langtags-phillips-davis-00: Extension example

[Addison Phillips [wM]]

Hi Han,

The extensions were *by design* not defined. We envisioned other
Internet-Drafts or external standards organizations defining standards that
use the extensions for their specific needs. In the draft we used the
Ethnologue codes and dialect names as an example of this. Obviously, Mark
and I also have our own nefarious purposes in that we foresee the exchange
of locale-like information using the extensions (and this is also reflected
in examples in the document).

The nature of the extensions is such that subtags after the -x- separator
might be ignored when they are not recognized. This may be useful when
interchanging text with some external entity. Really there should be text in
the "language matching" section (sections 2.4, 2.5) to that end.

Note that there are TWO private use mechanisms. The extensions are one. You
can also use variant subtags. These are not, I think, default ignorable and
this document would be the mechanism for registering publically interchanged
values. Variant subtags would match your set of Resian tag registrations
(note that you can use years directly, saving you some effort). If you
reached a point of diminishing returns you can then use the extension
mechanism.

I would also envision scholars and other technical users defining something
like the Ethnologue stuff as key-value pairs for the highly specific tagging
of text.

Best Regards,

Addison

Addison P. Phillips
Director, Globalization Architecture
webMethods | Delivering Global Business Visibility
http://www.webMethods.com
Chair, W3C Internationalization (I18N) Working Group
Chair, W3C-I18N-WG, Web Services Task Force
http://www.w3.org/International

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no
> [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no]On Behalf Of
> han.steenwijk at unipd.it
> Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 5:27 AM
> To: ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> Subject: draft-langtags-phillips-davis-00: Extension example
>
>
> Dear Addison, dear Mark
>
> Maybe the inclusion of a concrete example for how to construct an
> extension
> could be helpful. It was only after reading the announcing text
> on the homepage
> http://xml.coverpages.org/ that it dawned upon me that one can
> construct an
> extension like
>
> "-x-subdialect=biske"
>
> But I am still not too sure of that, because in the definition
>
> extensions= "-x" 1* ("-" key "=" value)
>
> value= * alphanum
>
> alphanum= (ALPHA / DIGIT)
>
> I do not find a specification for 'key'. Will there be a list of
> keywords to
> pick from?
>
> Han
>
>
>
>
> =================
> Prof. Han Steenwijk
> Universita di Padova
> Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Anglo-Germaniche e Slave
> Sezione di Slavistica
> Via Beldomandi, 1
> I-35139 Padova
>
> e-mail: han.steenwijk at unipd.it
> tel.: (39) 049 8278669
> fax:  (39) 049 8278679
>
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