On Sun, 12 Dec 2004, Bruce Lilly wrote:
If by international agreement, 'yz' becomes the designation
for that country, then it is rather silly to stick one's
fingers in one's ears and shout "NA-NA-NA-NA-NA I don't want
to hear you".
What is silly is saying that every language tag has to have a date/time
attribute associated with it so that computer software managing that text
knows the language of that text.
But that is precisely what you are advocating.
It's rather silly to change that correspondence simply because
a few people are piqued that international agreement has been
reached to change a few 2-letter codes.
It's bad enough that TLDs get recycled.
It is a disaster for language identifiers to get recycled. Something has
to make those identifiers unique. Your notion will force the inclusion of
a date/time stamp in language tags, to restore the uniqueness that you are
so excruciatingly eager to abolish.
Never
mind the shortcomings of that particular example; consider
"de-DE" -- does that mean Germany as it exists today, West
Germany as it existed 25 years ago, Germany as it existed
in the 1930s, the 1900s, ...?
For the 98% case, it does not matter at all.
But it does matter if, one day, "DE" becomes Denmark.
As far as I can tell, the draft pretends that the meaning
of "CS" hasn't changed, and would in fact change the meaning
of the currently valid RFC 3066 language tag "sr-CS".
No, it restores the previous meaning of sr-CS.
It is very different; under the proposed draft, there is only
an English definition, somebody wishing to provide a French
definition finds that he has none and must resort to an
unofficial translation.
Why is the situation for French different from someobody wishing to
provide a Lower Slobbobian definition?
SO where are the French definitions?
Ask a person who is bilingual in English and French to provide one.
Well, sure. But the name is an important thing by itself.
It is rather pointless to ask a user to indicate the
language of a piece of text by selecting from a list "AB, ACE,
ACH,..., ZHA, ZUL, ZUN" -- the user doesn't normally refer to
languages by codes. It's quite a different matter to ask the
user to select from "Abkhaze, Aceh, Acoli,..., Zhuang (Chuang),
Zoulou, Zuni".
Abkhaze, Aceh, Acoli,..., Zhuang (Chuang), Zoulou, and Zuni are not
language tags. So what's your point?
Note that the RFC 3066 specifies a registry that does not include French
language names. I suggest that this issue should be dropped.
Yes, the current IANA registry has that problem for
the non-ISO-based tags only. If the registry is to be
changed to subsume ISO codes as well, that defect should
be remedied.
Why is it a problem? Why is it a defect?
On the contrary, it is preposterous to suggest that codes
will be attached to text by magic
Here is where you are misled. Many of these tags are embedded within the
text itself. That text may long outlive its author in an archive.
My concern
is the elimination of the French definition in the first place.
Why is this a problem?
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
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