Last call for ISO 15924-based updates

Peter Constable petercon at microsoft.com
Tue Mar 17 12:47:44 CET 2009


From: Lang Gérard [mailto:gerard.lang at insee.fr] 

> I understand your position very well, but as I already had 
> the occasion to write it at least one time before, there is 
> in my opinion a fundamental error in your reasoning.

Well, I guess we fundamentally disagree on that point.


> It is a very god thing that IETF's BCP... make use of ISO 
> standards (de jure standards, that are designed for very 
> large categories of users), but they must use them only for 
> what they really are for and not twist these ISO standards 
> for the sole advantage of Internet or Language industry, 

I gather that it is "Zinh" that you consider to be twisting ISO 15924, but it is not BCP 47 or its users that requires "Zinh". Rather, it is the Unicode Standard, which is closely aligned with ISO/IEC 10646; and while ISO/IEC 10646 isn't today making reference to ISO 15924, it continues to align more and more with the Unicode Standard and, in particular, to incorporate data files that are part of the Unicode Standard; and so I would not be surprised if, in the near future, ISO/IEC 10646 also require "Zinh".


> ... that is maybe a growing part of the world, but not all 
> the world we live in. ... So, if information systems need 
> creation of special code elements to code special scenarios, 
> that certainly make sense in these restricted area,then they 
> should systematically reserved user-assigned code elements 
> that were created specially for such cases.

I'd agree if the audience for those special-case codings were limited to a restricted audience. IMO, however, Zihn is not. Effectively, via Unicode it will be used in the vast majority of information systems that process text.


Peter




More information about the Ietf-languages mailing list