Variant subtag proposal: Høgnorsk variety of Norwegian

Leif Halvard Silli xn--mlform-iua at xn--mlform-iua.no
Sun Jan 3 04:12:03 CET 2010


Kent Karlsson, Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:54:20 +0100:
> 
> The case for locale data is a bit different from that of language tagging.
> If a request for locale data (and by extension, "translation"/localisation
> of a computer application) is via a macrolanguage code, what is reasonable
> to do?

Why perform it via the macrolangage language tag at all?

But anyway, I accept that 'no' can contain Bokmål - and only Bokmål for 
that matter. And of course, only Nynorsk as well. I just don't accept 
that a resource tagged as 'no' should be presented as 'Bokmål' to users.

> Should one randomly (at program start, or even for each data item)
> pick from the entire range of languages covered by the macrolanguage code?
> While that may give an amusing mixture,

A piece of work, such as a computer application, should of course 
ideally have a unified style. But such patchwork localization that you 
fear here, is not an issue in OS X.

In OS X, if your language preference is set to Swedish, then if a 
particular application only exists in the Finland Swedish variant and 
thus perhaps contains a localization resource tagged as 'sv_FI', then 
you will get the application in Finland Swedish interface and not in 
English or whatever. There is no user interface that lets you say no to 
Finland Swedish, as long as you have accepted Swedish. The only way out 
is to manually disable the particular localization directly for that 
particular application.

> it does not seem to be a reasonable
> way of dealing with this case; it would also need extra machinery for the
> randomisation. Instead one manually preselects one of the encompassed
> individual languages. So for "no" it is reasonable to preselect "nb" data,
> since "nb" (at present) is more often used than "nn".

I would have preferred that 'nb' was treated by the OS as if it was 
encompassing 'no' - meaning that if no 'nb' resource is available, then 
a possible 'no' resource is the next priority. 'nn' could likewise be 
treated as if encompassing 'no' as well, since this is expected by most 
of the 'nn' users. I realize that this would lead 'nn' users to receive 
many resources in Bokmål.

This is not any very technically tricky at all. All the resources are 
there, in OS X. I is just a tagging/classification question.

I don't complain that 'en' resources in Mac OS X, from Apple's hand are 
filled with US English content and that it is presented as 'English' - 
no more or less - to the users. But I would complain if these 'en' 
resources with US English content were presented to users as 'US 
English'.

Or, if 'sv' was presented to OS X users as "Swedish Swedish". 

In OS X, Finland Swedish does have the choice of using 'sv'. British 
English does have the choice of using 'en'. But since 'no' is presented 
to users as 'Bokmål' (despite that 'nb' is also in simultaneous use), 
Nynorsk resources have a very high barrier against using the 'no' tag - 
as it will literally be presented as 'Bokmål'.
-- 
Leif Halvard Silli


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