"mis" update review request

Doug Ewell dewell at adelphia.net
Sat Apr 14 08:42:33 CEST 2007


Mark Davis <mark dot davis at icu dash project dot org> wrote:

> Moreover, while some may be perfectly willing to have stability go by 
> the wayside, it is extremely important to us

I think this comment is really disingenuous; there is probably not a 
single member of this list who does not care at all about stability.  It 
is more a question of what can really be expected in the way of 
"stability" when using collection codes, especially "Miscellaneous." 
They are not normatively defined in terms of their component languages, 
even by ISO 639, let alone by RFC 4646 or its predecessors.  One simply 
cannot know for certain exactly what languages are covered under "mis", 
or whether that list will be the same next week.

I suspect this whole debate over "mis" is more of a thought-experiment, 
based on what might happen when those who treat "mis" liberally clash 
with those who treat it conservatively, rather than developing out of 
any real conflict in usage.  I don't plan to worry about it much.  We 
have enough difficulty ironing out the real-world cases.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages



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