LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM: iu-Cans

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Fri Feb 18 12:52:45 CET 2005


At 22:34 -0800 2005-02-03, Peter Constable wrote:

>Also, I think the reluctance to register a tag like iu-Cans-CA is
>mistaken on other grounds: we are not obligated to determine that every
>valid tag denotes something distinct from every other valid tag.

We are not? ISO 639 does, and this RFC is an extension of that.

>I suspect that there's no distinction between fr-CI and fr-GH, but 
>both are valid tags, and probably in use somewhere.

Probably?

>And note that, while I think there's no distinction, someone else 
>may determine, for whatever reason, that they think they need to 
>distinguish something in this way.

At least there's a distinction between -CI and -GH. There is no 
distinction between Cans and Cans-CA, since Cans isn't used anywhere 
but CA.

>The important thing for us is not to establish precisely what every
>distinction is (an endless task involving an ever-changing domain over
>which different interpretations are possible), but rather to ensure that
>the intended meaning of any tag is understood by all and for which it is
>clear, to some minimal level, how to utilize it.

I thought the point was to register things that people need to make 
distinctions. You know. Distinctions. Like Scouse isn't standard 
English, so it needs a tag. Like Inuktitut in Syllabics isn't just 
Inuktitut, so it needs a tag. But there's no difference between 
Inuktitut in Syllabics and Inuktitut in Syllabics in Canada, so why 
would you need that tag?
-- 
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com


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