Last call for ISO 15924-based updates
Doug Ewell
doug at ewellic.org
Thu Mar 19 04:10:12 CET 2009
Randy Presuhn <randy underscore presuhn at mindspring dot com> wrote:
>> <span lang="en">
>> Send us your re<span lang="en-Zinh">[U+0301]</span>sume<span
>> lang="en-Zinh">[U+0301]</span>.
>> </span>
>
> This would not be a helpful thing to do. It makes no sense at all.
> Folks SHOULD NOT do it.
No kidding.
> If folks following this discussion (never mind random developers "out
> there") have somehow come to the conclusion that abominations like
> <span lang="en-Zinh">[U+0301]</span> would be ok, then in my view
> that's a strong argument that the comment really is needed.
You have successfully missed my point. It was supposed to be obvious
from the example that tagging individual code points in this way would
be a ridiculous thing to do.
> For *our* purposes, it is not needed. ISO 15924 serves other
> purposes, for which having such a code is useful. It's just not
> useful for the purpose of composing language tags. Before the <span
> lang="en-Zinh">[U+0301]</span> example started flying around, I had
> been convinced that the comment wasn't necessary. Now I'm not so
> sure.
Whereas I'm more sure than ever. We have subtags with names like
"Multiple languages" and "Not applicable" and "Code for unwritten
documents" and "Undetermined," and most people probably have some
internal notion of what those mean. There is a reasonable likelihood
that people might use those subtags, correctly or incorrectly, and even
so, we provided health warnings for those subtags not in the form of
Comments fields in the Registry, but in the section of RFC 4646 that
deals with tagging wisely.
For "Code for inherited script," there are likely to be only two types
of people: a minuscule few who understand the Unicode script property
and the fact that 'Zinh' applies only to isolated code points, and will
know to avoid this subtag, and the overwhelming majority who will be
totally baffled and mystified, and consequently will also avoid this
subtag. We only need to provide a warning in the Registry if we are
concerned that users will think "inherited script" means a writing
system carried down from one's ancestors or something.
--
Doug Ewell * Thornton, Colorado, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14
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