Meaning of "subtag"

[Doug Ewell]

John Cowan <jcowan at reutershealth dot com> wrote:

> provides a mechanism for picking out the country code that will
> not work in RFC 3066bis, where the rule is:
>
> 3) A 2-letter subtag that is not to the right of a singleton
> subtag is a country code, and nothing else is.

Whoa.  I think you just stepped back to that goofy terminology in RFC
1766, where a "language tag" consisted of a "primary language tag,"
optionally followed by a "first subtag," a "second subtag," and so on.
(Maybe not so goofy for speakers of en-GB, whose buildings have a
"ground floor" immediately below the "first floor," but there is still
ambiguity in the dual uses of "tag.")

RFC 3066 (and bis) fixed this confusion by starting with the "first
subtag" (which normally is the "primary language subtag"), followed by
the "second" etc.

So John's rule should be:

3) A 2-letter subtag that is not the primary language subtag, and is not
to the right of a singleton subtag, is a country code, and nothing else
is.

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