Region subtags under 3066 and 3066bis

Doug Ewell dewell at adelphia.net
Thu Feb 24 17:21:53 CET 2005


Frank Ellermann <nobody at xyzzy dot claranet dot de> wrote:

>>> Excl. the private use codes allowed by the 3066bis draft -
>>> not necessarily a good idea.
>>
>> Why not?  What problems do you see with using them?
>
> An "old" RfC 3066 implementation happy to recognize something
> in a language tag could handle AA, QM, etc. as "erroneous",
> not necessarily with the same result as for "unknown" codes.

The only way to guarantee complete, 100% compatibility with old RFC 3066
implementations that reject "unknown" codes (what RFC 3066bis calls
"validating processors") is to stay with RFC 3066 and never update it,
and to freeze the code list forever.

> I don't like the concept of "country codes" in language tags,

They are a fact of life for the past 10 years.

> and these "private use country codes" make a bad idea worse.

You have not shown that they are any worse than new ISO codes.

> Yes, some regions like the former YU automagically vanish from
> your registry, because YU was used for the new CS for about 11
> years.  You have the old CS as 200, but not the old YU as 890.
> You have the old YD (720) but not the old (YE) 886, etc.

Check the registry again.  YU has not vanished.  On the contrary, It has
been re-admitted.

>> Removing 200 is one of the issues I submitted to the authors.
>
> It's difficult to see that it's only a pseudo-random result.
>
> What would happen if CS splits into Serbia and Montenegro, and
> Serbia picks a name allowing it to _keep_ CS ?

That would be interesting, considering that CS was chosen as a mnemonic
for *C*rna Gora i *S*rbija.

> Without adding
> Kosovo to this equation the 3066bis result could be messy.  Do
> you keep the then old CS with a new ?? for Montenegro, and for
> regional languages in the new Serbia there's only a UN number ?

Sigh.  I am not going to keep fighting this battle alone.  I am a bit
disappointed that none of the other list members, some of whom have
worked with RFC 1766 and 3066 for 10 years now, have offered any
response.  Maybe it is just me, after all.

They are a fact of life for the past 10 years.

> Without the new GE your "exactly the same plot of land" rule
> determined by UN numbers would apparently fail, GE 296 is now
> KI 296.  ISO 3166-3 GEHH claims that TV 798 belonged to GE 296.

Enough.  I have already submitted the question to the RFC 3066bis
authors and I will wait for them to respond before saying anything
further.

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California
 http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/




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