[Ltru] Re: "mis" update review request

[Mark Davis]

That, I think, we are all in agreement on. And that follows what we do in
BCP 47, which is that we say that people *should* tag as specifically as
possible. So if I know that content is "en-US", I *should* say "en-US" and
not just "en". But I *can* also use "en". It might not be the best choice,
but it is a legitimate usage (although not optimal) usage. However, it is a
perfectly reasonable choice if I don't know whether it is "en-US" or
"en-CA", or it could be both.

So what about "mis"? Once again, I *should* tag more specifically, if I have
the information. No argument at all there. The question is whether it is
non-conformant to BCP 47 to tag "kind" as "mis". For that, we need to
establish whether there is sufficient grounds in the text and data of ISO
639-2 as of the time that "mis" was taken into BCP 47 to conclusively
determine that "mis" is disjoint from other language codes. I don't see a
conclusive case from what you and John have said so far, unless I'm missing
something.

I would not at all be adverse to saying that you shouldn't use "und" or
"mis" or "mul" or any collections if you have any more specific information
about the content. And I think it is clear that we need much more guidance
in BCP 47 as to intended usage.

Mark

On 4/13/07, Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com> wrote:
>
> I think ISO 639-2 is clear that the most specific category should be used.
> That principle is implicit in the "(Other)" collections. I also think that
> principle in combination with collections creates maintenance problems.
> (Which is why I suggested that all the "(Other)" entries should just be
> "languages" entries.)
>
> (Btw, I think I suggested some time ago it might not be a bad thing to
> deprecate use of collection IDs in IETF language tags.)
>
>
> Peter
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan at ccil.org]
> Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 2:07 PM
> To: Mark Davis
> Cc: LTRU Working Group; ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> Subject: [Ltru] Re: "mis" update review request
>
> Mark Davis scripsit:
>
> > You might like this to be true, but I don't see any substantiation of
> > it in the standard. If you could point me to that, I'd appreciate it.
>
> It seems rather self-evident to me that 'ber' is a subset of 'afa',
> and so on; but no, the standard doesn't say so.  It does, however, say:
>
>         A collective language code is not intended to be used when an
>         individual language code or another more specific collective
>         language code is available.
>
> http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/normtext.html section 4.1.1
>
> I take that to mean that "afa" is unsuitable for a Berber language, and
> "ger" is unsuitable for English.  A fortiori, "mis" is unsuitable for
> a language for which a better code is available.
>
> Questionless, this contradicts the desire for stability, but I don't
> see what's to be done about it.  I tried at one point to get all
> language collection codes deprecated, but it was pointed out that
> there are good reasons for having them, as when insufficient evidence
> is available.
>
> --
> John Cowan   cowan at ccil.org   http://ccil.org/~cowan
> I must confess that I have very little notion of what [s. 4 of the British
> Trade Marks Act, 1938] is intended to convey, and particularly the
> sentence
> of 253 words, as I make them, which constitutes sub-section 1.  I doubt if
> the entire statute book could be successfully searched for a sentence of
> equal length which is of more fuliginous obscurity. --MacKinnon LJ, 1940
>
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-- 
Mark
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