Subject: RE: [Ltru] Re: new version posted online

From: "Addison Phillips" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:05:22 -0700

Some more interlinear, elision as necessary.

Addison P. Phillips
Globalization Architect, Quest Software
Chair, W3C Internationalization Core Working Group

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
> Behalf Of Frank Ellermann

> 
> >>   variant   = (5*8alphanum) ; registered variants
> >>             / (DIGIT 3alphanum)
> 
> > Because that's fairly subtle too? And incorrect as written.
> 
> No, it's okay, anything with 5 up to 8 let-dig uses the first
> alternative, the second alternative handles the special case
> "length 4" (starting with a digit).
[Addison Phillips] 

Yes, I caught that.

> 
> >    Variant = 5*8alphanum
> >              / DIGIT 3*7alphanum
> 
> Also correct, but then both alternatives match for length > 4
> starting with a digit.  I'd prefer an unambiguous ABNF where
> possible.  Your subtle ABNF (reflected in the text later) is
> "alpha or digit", my less subtle variant is "length 5..8 or 4".
[Addison Phillips] 

Yes, I saw that. You appear to be the only other person who liked my original date subtag from draft-phillips-langtags-less-than-zero :-). I think there is a diminishing return to ruling out various subtag forms. Why allow '1dr5' and not '1234567'? 

> 
>  [case insensitive US ASCII]
> > Argh. Somebody make up their mind. We put them in, we take
> > them out.
> 
> It's not that important.  Arguing formally you could say that
> it's explained in 2234bis.  Or reference RfC 20 just for fun.
[Addison Phillips] 

(laughing) I took them out.
> 
> >>| Single letter and digit subtags are reserved for
> >> There are no single digits in the ABNF.
> 
> > No, there aren't. Be we reserve them here so that people
> > don't think we overlooked them.
> 
> Okay, you could add DIGIT to singleton in the ABNF.  Otherwise
> it makes me nervous if the text talks about something that's
> not in the ABNF or vice versa.
[Addison Phillips] 

Okay.
> 
> >> I don't see any i-whatever before this item, is this a
> >> trick, the i-whatever case is no primary subtag ?  OTOH
> >> there must be a primary subtag.
> 
> > i-* are all grandfathered by rule.
> 
> Sure, but your text says:
> 
> | The primary subtag is the first subtag in a language tag
> 
> Then you enumerate all cases incl. x-, but not i-.  Somewhere
> I miss i-.  Maybe you need something like this:
> 
>  The primary subtag is the first subtag in a language tag,
>  if the language tag is no grandfathered tag (see 2.2.8).
> 
That's an excellent idea.

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---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 01:55:57 +0200

Addison Phillips wrote:
 
> I think there is a diminishing return to ruling out various
> subtag forms. Why allow '1dr5' and not '1234567'?

Just to be sure, 1dr5 matches the less subtle DIGIT 3alphanum,
and it matches DIGIT 3*7alphanum, so it's okay in all discussed
ABNF versions.  1234567 matches a less subtle 5*8alphanum, and
it matches a subtle DIGIT 3*7alphanum, also okay.  The subtle
ABNF and the less subtle ABNF for a variant are equivalent.

Starting with chapter 3 - I like to read ABNF, it's addictive:

| field-name = *(ALPHA/NUM/%x5F)

IMHO it's better to enumerate them.  Do we have any convincing
reasons to use "_" instead of "-" in field names ?  Mail and
news header field names use "-" (no rule, an observation).

You use uppercase for character names everywhere (HYPHEN-MINUS,
COLON, AMPERSAND, EURO-SIGN), I'm not sure about this style.

The XML-URl is still the 3rd ed., not the shorter generic URL
of the latest version: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#dt-charref

For an explanation of "folding" you could reference RfC 822,
but actually the FWS in 2822 is better than the LWSP in 2234bis
for this purpose.  LWSP allows "empty" lines (trailing blanks),
we don't need or want this in the registry.  Better _copy_ FWS
from RfC 2822, we also don't need or want obs-FWS:

 field-body = *( ASCCHAR / FWS )
 FWS        = [*WSP CRLF] 1*WSP    ; Folding white space

For 'subtag' you say "MUST only..." enumerating the five types.

For 'tag' you say "MUST" (gradfathered / redundant) followed by
a "MUST NOT...".  The "MUST only..." style without "MUST NOT"
is less verbose.

| Description values are restricted to the Basic Latin and
| Latin-1 blocks as defined by Unicode [7] (that is, ISO/IEC
| 10646 character numbers less than U+0100).

Why this restriction ?  What's wrong with say Zcaron, Yuml, or
OElig ?  You even have the Euro as example elsewhere.  

| For example: 2004-06-28 represents June 28, 2004, in the
| Gregorian calendar.

Once is enough, you have it in Added _and_ Depreated.  But an
example for Recommended_Prefix where it's defined could be
useful.  You could say that it's _never_ used for a 'Language',
like you later say that Suppress_Script MAY _only_ be used for
a 'Language'.

Some field definitios have a period, others don't.  In "Either
'Subtag' or 'Tag'" that results in two unseparated sentences.

I'm not happy with the canonical rules, they have undesirable
effects for region codes => JFTR, after draft -01.  But there's
another STRONGLY in this section.

| Comments

The examples use "Comment" (singular).  Later there's another
"Comments".  Quite a lot of examples, maybe you can delete some
less interesting examples, e.g. either Africa or North America.

I'll scan 3.2 ff. later, bye, Frank