language tag structure

[JFC (Jefsey) Morfin]

Dear Peter,
I like this mailing list :-). Once my little daughter was lost in an 
Airport and I called the Company and then the Police. All what the Company 
Manager was able to repeat me was "Sir, we never lost a kid". Happily the 
Police found her (she was very lost, very far from the airport). I have the 
same feeling here. When I document why I need to use the tag for _today_ 
needs, the response is "no one will ever need this".


At 16:17 17/01/2005, Peter Constable wrote:

> > From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> > bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of JFC (Jefsey) Morfin
>
>
> > >Your other four components, language, script (not "scripting", please),
> >
> > Thank you for the "scripting" correction. However I have a question on
> > this. I want to indicate the way the text is written - like in
> > "handwriting". I feel that one of the problems of this list (well defined
> > in BPC 025 § 2.3) is an internal view of the problem at hand. Not of its
> > global external impact. In here I do not consider only the ISO scripts
> > list, but the real way networked life will consider them as vernacular
> > vehicles, including barcodes, RFIDs, voice, menus, scanerised handwriting,
> > etc.
> >
> > Does "script" covers all this? Thank you.
>
>"Scripting" is definitely wrong. What we need to distinguish goes slightly 
>beyond script; e.g. Kachin in its Latin practical orthography versus 
>phonetic transcription of Kachin using Latin-based phonetic symbols.
>
>On the other hand, we do not need to distinguish printed forms from 
>scanned handwriting -- these are tags for identifying the linguistic form, 
>not the file format or the means of generating the text.

Good definition of the disagreement. You say what this mailing list does 
not proposes. I say that real life is not limited to what that and needs 
it. So, either your scholars needs can be addressed as a part of a global 
real life solution as I propose, or not - you guys to decide. Since there 
will be always scholars disputes and salesmen brillant ideas, if we do not 
agree on a common approach we will have confusion.

>I don't see the relevance of menus: we're not tagging genres of documents. 
>Nor do I see the relevance of barcodes or RFIDs -- I suppose these 
>technologies could be used to encode linguistic texts, but even so we want 
>describe the linguistic variety of the text, not the encoding format.

The script _is_ an encoding format. Together with founts, etc.

>Voice *is* relevant, but I'm not sure there's a need to include in these 
>tags an indicator that the content is voice content rather than text 
>content. I won't rule out the possibility that a case could be made for 
>it, however.

Good! at least we can document if a Chinese text is spoken on-line in 
Breton in using a single tag format.

> > > >     - the authoritative source/reference is Microsoft (and they miss a
> > > > _lot_ of words)...
>
> > I will take an example. There is a major lingual change in France (not in
> > French) about the way to address a she-civil servant...
>
>If you think people are going to tag content to distinguish down to the 
>level of individual lexical innovations, I'd say you're dreaming.

Great. I just documented you a case where people need and want that 
tagging. And all what you can say is "you're dreaming" ...


OK. I understand that you see no other flaw in my approach than finding a 
correct wording for an extended script concept. Could "vector" or "vehicle" 
be understandable? Any other suggestion. I note that in addition to the 
current script variations we may know, the easy graphic dissemination and 
acceptance via the Web will most probably lead to new characters to be 
generated easily. What Cyrill and Method were able to achieve a long ago, 
should most probably be carried more easily today.

We also have a lot hieroglyphs being accepted in the day to day life. How 
do you want the "I [hart] NY" or the smileys to be read by a web service, a 
scanner, etc. if you do not document the forms. There is a free offer for 
10.000 smileys. They all make much more sense to the entire mankind than 
any English word (even "OK").

jfc