Request for variant subtag fr 16th-c 17th-c RESUBMISSION

[Doug Ewell]

Ciarán Ó Duibhín <ciaran at oduibhin dot freeserve dot co dot uk> wrote:

> Would acceptance of CE's present proposals still allow these two to be 
> made subtags of a future French macrolanguage (in case that might be 
> CE's preferred long-term solution), or would that be ruled out as 
> again associating each subtag with two prefixes?

Once again, I think the question to be asked, before we get too far 
along that path, is whether ISO 639-3/RA plans to expand the 
macrolanguage concept to cover early/middle/modern.

Addison Phillips <addison at yahoo dash inc dot com> replied:

> Subtags may have many prefixes... as many as necessary.

I suppose I should reiterate that the objection to CE's original 
proposal that these two subtags have two prefixes each was NOT due to 
some blanket rule against two prefixes.  The result would have been that 
the same text ("late middle" or "early modern" French, if you will) 
could have been tagged as either "middle" or "modern" French -- that is 
to say, "frm" or "fr" --depending on the whim of the author, in order to 
maximize browser hits.  That's not interoperability; it's advertising 
your business in multiple sections of the Yellow Pages to increase 
sales.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
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