Portuguese subtags

[Peter Constable]

From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Luc Pardon

>  Whether people like the spelling or not is totally irrelevant. Whether the dictionary for it is printed in the proper typeface or on the proper paper size to be recognized by Michael as a valid source is totally irrelevant. In fact, whether or not there is a dictionary at all is irrelevant. The requester must simply provide a "Reference to published description of the language (book or article)". 

True, though keep in mind the intent: that we can know that the item being requested is real, and also so that someone looking up the registration details can have some way to determine that that thing actually represents and, hence, be able to use the subtag in an interoperable manner.

In the case of spelling conventions, the subtag ought to be usable to annotate a spell checking dictionary resource, or to annotate content to reflect that it should be spell checked using that dictionary. And it's reasonable to expect that two different spell checkers purporting to use the same conventions would give largely the same results. But that means that two different implementers need to be able to find references that give characterizations of the conventions that are clear enough and similar enough to lead to consistency. A good way to achieve that is to have the subtag registration point to an instance of such a characterization.

(I making general comments; I'm not saying what should or shouldn't be done in this particular case.)


Peter