"gd" and "ga", or "gla" and "gld"

[Martin Duerst]

John is right. For more details, please see
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-lang-2or3.html.

Regards,  Martin.


At 15:42 03/09/03 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
>Caoimhin O Donnaile scripsit:
>
> > I seem to remember a rule saying that two-letter codes should be used
> > if these are available, but my tidy mind would prefer three-letter codes
> > for all languages, and I have a feeling that these might be on the
> > way with the unification between Ethnologue codes and ISO 639-2.
>
>The rule is indeed to use 2-letter codes where they exist.  This is
>needed not so much for concision as for backward compatibility with
>the millions of pages labeled "en", "de", "es", "fr", and so on.
>The reason that 3-letter codes are not permitted in such cases is
>to make the way of those who would interpret those codes easy:
>if authors were permitted to use either "en" or "eng", readers would
>have to specify both "en" and "eng" in all cases, since those values
>are synonymous.
>
>--
>John 
>Cowan  jcowan at reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
>"If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
>on my shoulders."
>         --Hal Abelson
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