What's the plan for ISO 639-3 and RFC 3066 ter?

Peter Constable petercon at microsoft.com
Fri Aug 20 07:56:17 CEST 2004


> From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan at reutershealth.com]


> > (Note, though: there's nothing in the draft for 639-3 saying that a
new
> > macrolang ID can't be added at any time.)
> 
> Perhaps there should be.

There are complications. Spec'ing this would kind of require writing a
complete spec for exactly in what ways the total code set could or could
not be changed. It would be somewhat analogous to having an operational
spec that told you exactly what characters could or could not be added
to Unicode -- something we're not yet ready to write after around 15
years and 4 major editions. I'd rather not make this a requirement on
the initial publication of 639-3.



> Furthermore, there is no reason to think that an individual language
> will be in only one collection in future

Indeed. 


> (you probably haven't gotten
> to my long posting yet).

Nope; and it's bedtime. I'm off to Europe tomorrow; may be a few days
before I respond to anything further.



Peter


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