LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION REQUEST - zxx

[Phillips, Addison]

I'm not sure ANYTHING can improve the situation with regard to Suppress-Script, although I note that draft-4646bis makes an attempt to clarify the text somewhat. In any case, I thought it blindingly obvious that 'zxx' could not have a Suppress-Script, since the criterion for this field is:

---
This field indicates a script used to write the overwhelming majority of documents for the given language and which therefore adds no distinguishing information to a language tag.
---

The overwhelming majority of non-linguistic content is not written in a script--any script at all! For example:

<m:data xmlns:m='http://example.org/people' xml:lang='zxx' >
  <name xml:lang='und'>Addison Phillips</name>
  <photo>/aWKKapGGyQ=</photo>
  <sound>sdcfo2JTiXE=</sound>
  <hash>Faa7vROi2VQ=</hash>
</m:data>

It is wrong to consider Base64's use of ASCII characters for encoding bytes as the use of a "script". It's a transfer encoding, not writing.

Addison

Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Lab126
Chair -- W3C Internationalization Core WG

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-
> bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Doug Ewell
> Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 9:51 PM
> To: ietf-languages at iana.org
> Subject: Re: LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION REQUEST - zxx
>
> Frank Ellermann <nobody at xyzzy dot claranet dot de> wrote:
>
> > The discussion was about the fact that "zxx" is a subtag, and can be
> > used in tags such as "zxx", "zxx-Latn", or "zxx-Zyyy". Assuming that
> > "zxx" automagically means "zxx-Latn" would be wrong.
>
> Right.  That's why there is no Suppress-Script for 'zxx'.  To me, and
> perhaps I'm the only one, this is so obvious that the statement:
>
>     "The idea that there is no Suppress-Script 'Latn' for 'zxx'...
> might
> be important."
>
> left me bewildered.
>
>
> CE Whitehead <cewcathar at hotmail dot com> wrote:
>
> > Hi, all.I think that some [zxx] content, when written/printed, is in
> > Latin-1 (for example, programmatic content)but it could be in any
> > script or no script-so I am not sure if a suppress-script makes sense
> > either.
>
> As exemplified by this statement, there is surely more confusion over
> the meaning and purpose of Suppress-Script than all other newly
> introduced RFC 4646 concepts put together.  I'd like to suggest that a
> special page about Suppress-Script be added to Stéphane Bortzmeyer's
> site at www.langtag.net to help alleviate this confusion.  I don't
> propose to write this page myself, as none of my efforts to explain
> Suppress-Script seem to have improved the signal-to-noise ratio.
>
> --
> Doug Ewell  *  Arvada, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
> http://www.ewellic.org
> http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages  ˆ
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-languages mailing list
> Ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages