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

Addison Phillips addison at yahoo-inc.com
Tue Jan 23 18:40:29 CET 2007


Ciarán Ó Duibhín wrote:
> Thanks, but I need to ask further: if "frx" is the hypothetical French
> macrolanguage, do you mean that "frx-1694" could co-exist with "fr-1694" 

Yes, the two could co-exist.

(in
> which case, why cannot "fr-1694" and "frm-1694" co-exist)? 

No technical reason why they could not... However, the tag "frm-1694" 
would seem to be nonsensical: if "1694" identifies "Early Modern 
French", it doesn't make any sense to allow the tag "frm-1694", which 
means approximately "the Early Modern French variation of Middle French".

Another way of saying that is: RFC 4646 allows multiple prefixes, but 
discourages (and ietf-languages probably won't permit) nonsense to be 
registered.

If, however, there is a real, valid use for the '1694' subtag with 
'frm', then ietf-languages would probably form a consensus allowing its 
registration.

> Or do you mean
> that something like "frx-fr-1694" could co-exist with "fr-1694" but
> "frx-1694" could not?

"frx-fr-1694" is illegal. (Extended language subtags require three 
letter codes.)

In any case, I meant that prefixes can be added to variant subtags, 
provided said prefixes meet the stability rules in Section 3.4 of RFC 4646.

Best Regards,

Addison

-- 
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.


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