proposed ISO 639 change for "arn"

[Michael Everson]

On 11 Dec 2012, at 01:20, Mark Davis ☕ <mark at macchiato.com> wrote:

> BTW, as far as we, and many others are concerned, making it a macrolanguage doesn't accomplish anything. 

It preserves "arn" in use with a different definition. This is nothing new. A number of three-letter codes have been shifted in this way relatively recently. 

> Unicode CLDR has a policy always retains the macrolanguage code, using it instead of the predominent encompassed form. This is also true of many if not most companies and organizations that use Unicode CLDR, as well as others. For example, we use and will continue to use "zh" instead of "cmn". This was to avoid the massive costs and compatibility problems that switching forms would have caused.

Policies are made by people, and exceptions for principled reasons are also made by people. 

> So if "arn" were a macrolanguage, it wouldn't make any difference for many if not most implementations. They would continue to use arn.

So what is it that you want, Mark? For 700,000 Mapudungun speakers to be forced to use a code which to them is deeply offensive? 

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/