Principles of Operation (was: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REQUEST FORM, Erzgebirgisch)

[Frank Ellermann]

Peter Constable wrote:

> Without commenting on whether 'sxu' is appropriate in this
> case or not

If it were we could discuss prefixes de- OR sxu- for erzgeb,
but we can add a prefix sxu- later if needed.

> I could suggest the possibility of (exceptionally)
> registering "sxu" if that were needed to provide the
> correct language subtag with which to associate a variant
> subtag.

Under RFC 4646 rules adding "sxu" to ISO 639-2, and then to
the IANA registry, is possible.  We can't make up codes out
of foreign namespaces (here alpha3 for ISO 639) because they
are allegedly needed to form a variant.  

What we could do is register "saxon" after the ISO 639 folks
decided that they won't add "sxu" to 639-2 following their
own rules.  For languages there are enough possibilities, no
"exceptions" needed.

> it's really not problematic in any technical way.

Like adding "EU" that would constitute a "process failure".

That you are confident that "sxu" won't result in a collision
later isn't good enough to add "sxu" to the 4646 registry now.

 Frank