"mis" update review request
John Cowan
cowan at ccil.org
Fri Apr 13 22:15:41 CEST 2007
Mark Davis scripsit:
> That means that in ISO 639-2 the following are collections:
> mul Multiple languages
Yes, unfortunately. 639-3 takes a more sensible stand, and calls
'und', 'zxx', and 'mul' special (as distinct from individual language,
macrolanguage, collection, or private-use).
> The language codes clearly do not form a partition, since some
> collections encompass other codes.
True. The collection codes, however, form a rootless hierarchy,
a rather flat one, of which "mis" is one top-level component.
> The collection codes that are tagged with (Other) are clearly meant
> to be the remainder of partitions, but for the collections that are
> not tagged with (Other) there is no evidence that they were intended
> to exclude other cases -- if anything, the contrary -- if they had
> meant to be the remainder of partitions, they would have said (Other).
I think that's reading too much into them; the entries are the work
of many hands. FWIU, all the "(Other)" epithets are being removed,
anyhow.
> Moreover, while some may be perfectly willing to have stability go by
> the wayside, it is extremely important to us, and that is one of the
> guiding principles of and reasons for BCP 47. That means that if I
> validly and correctly tag content with "mis", that application cannot
> be made incorrect by any future change to BCP 47. That is why we can
> broaden the application of codes, but cannot narrow them.
+1
> There is no evidence in BCP 47 that I cannot correctly tag the content
> "kind" with "mis".
There is no *evidence* that you cannot tag "George slipped on a banana
peel and fell down" as "fr". It's a quality of implementation issue.
--
Eric Raymond is the Margaret Mead John Cowan
of the Open Source movement. cowan at ccil.org
--Bruce Perens, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
some years ago
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