Points 3, 4 and 2 [RE: About: Tags for Identifying Languages (draft-phillips-langtags-01)]

John Clews scripts20 at uk2.net
Mon Mar 8 10:44:49 CET 2004


Thanks Addison for your reply, and thanks to Mike Ksar for confirming the
date which needs correcting in the draft.

Could you also reply to my original points 3 and 4 (and 2) below, which
you didn't cover in your reply.

>> 3. In my view, it would also do well to allow inclusion of the widely
>> used LOCODEs to specify locations.

These are specified in UN/ECE RECOMMENDATION 16: UN/LOCODE (UNITED NATIONS
CODE FOR TRADE AND TRANSPORT LOCATIONS)
and available from the UN/CEFACT site.

This would allow much easier specification of place in specifying language
variants, e.g. for the Martha's Vineyard version of sign language, to
incorporate the LOCODE string
usmvy
within the language tag.

>> 4. In my view, it would also do well to refer to ISO 639-3 codes,
>> once that gets passed.

That is under development. Will that be covered when, as you put it, the
draft RFC will "advance to the next stage of standardization (or be
revised so that it can so progress?" You didn't mention that in your
reply.

In addition, you also mention:

> The newest draft includes UN M49 codes.

That's true, though this is a workaround for what I raised in my point 2:

>> 2. It covers the CS/CS problem well in dealing with ISO 3166 codes
>> (though naturally it would be better if the ISO 3166/MA didn't do such
>> stupid things - has anybody heard of top-level actions regarding the
>> allocation of the CS code in ISO 3166?)

There needs to be some rationale for why the code YU would not do, or
whether YU would do in certain instances. In the case of both YU and CS,
there are smaller entities that exist instead of the larger entities which
those originally represented (as is also the case for SU).

However, there could be legitimate historical reasons for having cs-CS as
well as sr-YU, so why is a string of numerical digits listed as the only
option?

And how would people know when to use digit codes rather than 2-letter codes?

And is there any software etc which specifies using 2-letter codes, which
would invalidate use of 3-digit codes?


John


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John Clews,
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