The limit of language codes

CE Whitehead cewcathar at hotmail.com
Sat Feb 17 20:17:07 CET 2007


>
>John Cowan schreef:
>>Gerard Meijssen scripsit:
>>
>>
>>>When we can convince the tool makers that they ALWAYS enter the
>>>language code as part of the meta data of a document and, when they
>>>were to allow for all the linguistic entities that are recognised we
>>>would have a much rosier situtation.
>>>
>>
>>Unfortunately that doesn't really help.  See Doctorow's classic "Metacrap"
>>rant <http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm>; it's a little 
>>overstated,
>>but content-creators gain little from providing accurate metadata, and
>>often have much to gain by lying.
>Hoi,
>It is exactly for this reason why I want to address the tool makers of this 
>world. If the tool by default does a decent thing, then people may be lazy, 
>it is done for them so they do not need to bother. When it is in the 
>interest of people not to lie, they can be lazy. When the tool does it for 
>people, they can be stupid but it does not matter. By being really specific 
>to what we want to achieve, ie correct language tagging, adding the 
>meta-data becomes less problematic. Schemas may not be neutral, but we at 
>least make an attempt to get it right. We are agnostic about what is 
>presented .. we could not care less about the message as long as the 
>message about the language of the message is loud and clear. Indeed there 
>is more than one way to describe a language.. so we make it something that 
>a program does for you.. You do not have to worry your pretty head about 
>it.
>
>So yes, lets talk to the toolmakers.
>
>Thanks,
>    GerardM
More must be done to convince the toolmakers.
There are of course the HTML coders too.  I think they are more and more 
likely to be aware of the need to encode language though.

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com

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