Code Changes (CC) in ISO 15924

Doug Ewell dewell at adelphia.net
Fri Jan 28 08:00:09 CET 2005


JFC (Jefsey) Morfin <jefsey at jefsey dot com> wrote:

>> Read RFC 3066.
>
> I found nothing about Registrar (word does not exist there). I found
> nothing about his designation process. The duration of his term. His
> duties. The procedure of appeal, etc. A Registrar is a IANA/ICANN
> function to manage a Registry, ie with the capacity to register. What
> is documented in the RFC 3066 is a "reviewer" with a capacity to not
> register. That Reviewer is also not documented, except as designated
> by the Applications Area Director what rise many problems since there
> are two of them.

Oh, I see.  Your original question was intended to expose the fact that
a person called a Reviewer actually performs registration functions.
You could have just come out and said so.

Probably there was an understanding that the business of reviewing and
registering language tags was a non-controversial one.  It certainly has
been for the last ten years, with a handful of exceptions.

Remember that the positions of ISO 15924 Registrar (which Mark Davis was
referring to) and RFC 3066 Language Tag Reviewer are not the same
position.  It happens that they are both filled by the same individual.

> This function was of low importance as long as registrationswere not
> mandatory. It will be a key or even "the" key IANA function, as
> appeals and conflicts will most probably rise on language
> regsitrations with powerful and decided interest being at stake (cf.
> .PL/MINC issue), should the Draft be accepted as a BCP. My question is
> therefore very important.

The Language Subtag Reviewer in RFC 3066bis has three jobs related to
language subtags:

1.  When ISO 639 adds a new language code, add the corresponding
language subtag to the Registry.  This is clerical and
non-controversial.

2.  When ISO 639 changes the code for a language, add the new code as an
alias for the old code.  This is also clerical and non-controversial, so
long as ISO 639/RA doesn't reuse codes.

3.  When someone submits a request to register a language tag (4 to 8
letters), that request must be scrutinized carefully before
registration.  Unlike (1) and (2) above, this requires a lot of thought
and discussion and may be highly controversial.  The draft makes it
clear that such registrations are discouraged.

The ".PL/MINC issue" has nothing whatsoever to do with whether 'ar' is a
valid language code or whether 'PL' is a valid country code.  Neither
the draft, nor RFC 3066 nor RFC 1766 before it, makes any judgment about
whether "ar-PL" is an appropriate language tag.  Anything else related
to the ".PL/MINC issue" is out of the scope of language tags.  This has
been explained to you before.

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




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