Principles of Operation (was LANGUAGE SUBTAG REQUESTFORMErzgebirgisch)

[Frank Ellermann]

David Starner wrote:
 
> Why does it matter whether it's en-caesarea or ang-caesarea
> except to linguists? Those details should be hidden from
> end users and are in most cases.

I have "en-GB", "en", and "en-us" in the language preferences
of my browser, and with a "quick locale switcher" tool I can
pick what I want for tests.  So far my browser, this tool, and
I never considered to add "ang" or "sxu".  I had to configure
"frr" manually for tests (no effect so far, e.g. "frr" isn't
in the various lists of languages supported by Google).

It depends on what the requester wants.  If it's for research
or other "any unique tag will do" purposes a linguistically
correct but otherwise obscure prefix is fine.  

Clearly using "ang" (or "sxu") for a research project showing
that this is actually wrong would be odd.  OTOH if it is meant
to help all speakers of the dialect that their Web content is
"supported" in various ways, then using less obscure prefixes
"en" (or "de") is better.

 Frank