Subject: WG Action: Language Tag Registry Update (ltru)

From: IESG Secretary <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 16:33:22 -0500

A new IETF working group has been formed in the Applicationa Area. 
For additional information, please contact the Area Directors 
or the WG Chairs.

+++

Language Tag Registry Update (ltru)
-------------------------------------

Current Status: Active Working Group

Chair(s):
Randy Presuhn <[email-masked]>
Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>

Applications Area Director(s):
Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Scott Hollenbeck <[email-masked]>

Applications Area Advisor:
Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>

Mailing Lists:
General Discussion: [email-masked]
To Subscribe: https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru
Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ltru/index.html

Description of Working Group:

RFC 3066 and its predecessor, RFC 1766, defined language tags for use
on the Internet. Language tags are necessary for many applications,
ranging from cataloging content to computer processing of text. The
RFC 3066 standard for language tags has been widely adopted in various
protocols and text formats, including HTML, XML, and CLDR, as the best
means of identifying languages and language preferences. Since the
publication of RFC 3066, however, several issues have faced
implementors of language tags:

* Stability and accessibility of the underlying ISO standards
* Difficulty with registrations and their acceptance
* Lack of clear guidance on how to identify script and region where 
necessary
* Lack of parseability and the ability to verify well-formedness.
* Lack of specified algorithms, apart from pure prefix matching, 
for operations on language tags.

This working group will address these issues by developing two
documents. The first is a successor to RFC 3066. It will describe the
structure of the IANA registry and how the registered tags will relate
to the generative mechanisms (originally described in RFC 3066, but
likely to be updated by the document). In order to be complete, it
will need to address each of the challenges set out above:

- For stability, it is expected that the document will describe how
the meaning of language tags remains stable, even if underlying
references should change, and how the structure is to remain stable in
the future. For accessibility, it is to provide a mechanism for easily
determining whether a particular subtag is valid as of a given date,
without onerous reconstruction of the state of the underlying standard
as of that time.

- For extensibility, it is expected that the document will describe
how generative mechanisms could use ISO 15924 and UN M.49 codes
without explicit registration of all combinations. The
current registry contains pairs like uz-Cyrl/uz-Latn and
sr-Cyrl/sr-Latn, but RFC 3066 contains no general mechanism or
guidance for how scripts should be incorporated into language tags;
this replacement document is expected to provide such a mechanism.

- It is also expected to provide mechanisms to support the evolution 
of the underlying ISO standards, in particular ISO 639-3, mechanisms to
support variant registration and formal extensions, as well as
allowing generative private use when necessary.

- It is expected to specify a mechanism for easily identifying the role
of each subtag in the language tag, so that, for example, whenever a
script code or country code is present in the tag it can be extracted,
even without access to a current version of the registry. Such a
mechanism would clearly distinguish between well-formed and valid
language tags, to allow for maximal compatibility between
implementations released at different times, and thus using different
versions of the registry.

The second document will describe matching algorithms for use with
language tags. Language tags are used in a broad variety of contexts
and it is not expected that any single matching algorithm will fit all
needs. Developing a small set of common matching algorithms does seem
likely to contribute to interoperability, however, as it seems likely
that using protocols could reference these well-known algorithms in
their specifications.

This working group will not take over the existing review function of 
the ietf-languages list. The ietf-languages list will continue to
review tags according to RFC 3066 until the first document produced by
the WG is approved by the IESG for publication as an RFC. Then it will
review according to whatever procedures the first document specifies.

Goals and Milestones:
Mar 05    Sumbit first working group draft of registry-structure draft  
Apr 05    Submit first draft of matching algorithms draft  
May 05    Submit first draft of matching algorithms draft  
Aug 05    Submit matching algorithms draft for IETF Last Call  

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