Registry of registries? (RE: (iso639.1574) New ISO 639 language identifier - Klingon)

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On 25. februar 2004 08:22 -0800 "Addison Phillips [wM]" 
<aphillips at webmethods.com> wrote:

> The problem here is that the source materials for the various ISO
> standards are not always readily available. Rfc3066 puts the burden on
> implementations to figure it out. A larger, more formal registry might
> need to include authoritative sources for ISO639-x, ISO3166, and
> ISO15924, since this is the Ur-data for generating any additional
> fallback tables.

hmmmm...... do I see a need for a "standards activity to coordinate 
publication of the technical content of identfier-list stanards"?

Perhaps complete with an XML syntax for the listing and a registry of 
authoritative data repositories, with RDF feeds for distributing news of 
changes and additions to the registries, facilitating automatic generation 
of screams of outrage whenever any of these registries does something 
really, really bizarre???

I'm only being almost facetious here - I think we all agree that such a 
facility would be a great thing to have - and won't happen until some group 
of people is willing to push for it and (individually) deal with the 
political and practical idiosyncrasies of the various organizations keeping 
parts of the puzzle?

Anyone care to take the lead?

             Harald