Language for taxonomic names, redux

[Peter Constable]

From: Ietf-languages [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Michael Everson
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2017 7:04 AM

[back-and-forth dialog ignored and snipped; I found this thanks to Philip Newton calling attention to it]

> I would also like other members of this list to be explicit about their support. misgivings, 
> or disapproval of the scheme. No plus-ones, and if you’re fence-sitting, say that explicitly 
> too. Thanks. 

I'm not opposed in principle. 

But I don't think a good case has been made for use. (You want to style terms differently? You don't need a language tag for that. You want terms to be ignored by spellers? There are existing ways to do that, such as a private-use tag. You want to do both? You can use a private-use language tag for both the styling and spelling issues.) The key issue in my mind is public, interoperable interchange: is this likely to be used to improve existing challenges in interoperability of publicly-interchanged information? Styling a web page does not entail a public language-info interchange operability issue. Making 3rd-party TTS tools behave in a particular way would, if there was any likelihood of such tools existing. But I haven't seen a good case made along that line.

I also don't think there's clarity about how to tag: as a language, as a variant of some particular language, or as variants of various languages.



Peter