Subject: [Ltru] Re: Proposals for changes to latest draft

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:44:20 -0800

John Cowan <cowan at ccil dot org> wrote:

> 2.2.3 bullet 6 adds the notion that the hitherto private tag Qabx is 
> to be usurped to mean "no written content".  I agree that the 
> "unwritten languages" script tag does not do the job here, but I deny 
> that it is proper to steal a private-use tag, and I don't see any need 
> to have such an entity at all.

Using Qabx was my idea, to replace Mark's original proposal to use Zxxx 
for this purpose.  Zxxx is the ISO 15924 code element meaning "code for 
unwritten languages."  I take that quite literally to mean "languages 
that do not have any commonly accepted writing system," which admittedly 
would be a rather odd piece of information to put in a language tag, and 
which is very different IMHO from "content that happens not to be in a 
writing system," such as signed or spoken content.  This was my 
interpretation, but I confirmed it with Michael, the ISO 15924 
Registrar.

When an ISO standard that establishes a coding structure provides for 
private-use code elements, as ISO 639 and 3166 and 10646 and 15924 do, 
applications that use those standards are generally permitted to 
allocate code elements from the private space for their own needs.  For 
example, CLDR uses the ISO 3166 private-use code element QO for 
"Outlying Oceania."  We are permitted to do similarly for the Language 
Subtag Registry.

I intentionally chose the last available ISO 15924 code as the least 
likely to cause conflict, since users of private codes tend to start at 
the bottom and work their way up, unless another approach yields better 
mnemonic value (which is in short supply among the 50 private codes in 
ISO 15924).

Whether there is a need at all for a script subtag meaning "not written" 
is a battle I'll leave to others, but if there is, it should not be 
Zxxx.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages

_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru

---

From: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 06:40:41 -0800

> "Outlying Oceania."  We are permitted to do similarly for the Language 

I don't much care for the usurpation of any of the private use codes. It 
is tantamount to assigning the code, given that BCP 47 is widely used. 
If people feel strongly about it, it might be wise to approach ISO 15924 
and ask for a code assignment for the separate purpose of indicating "a 
language which could be written but happens not to be".

> is a battle I'll leave to others, but if there is, it should not be Zxxx.
> 

For reasons already stated: I don't see an actual use case for this subtag.

Let me expound upon it here slightly.

The presence of a script subtag indicates that the associated content is 
most likely textual and is written predominantly in that script. In the 
absence of a script subtag, a language tag may still *imply* a script in 
cases in which the content is text (that is, actually written) and the 
language is predominantly written in a single script (see: 
"Suppress-Script"), but this should not be taken to mean that the 
content *must* be text (written).

The point of having an "anti-script" subtag would be to identify that 
content emphatically is not written. This would allow one to select 
(filter) the unwritten content using only the language tag (since one 
could use a language range that included the subtag).

The problem is that most (I would say "all") such content has other, 
more salient features that describe the content as non-textual. On the 
Internet, for example, there is Content-Type. The problem here appears 
to be that some folks are not happy with a simple tag, such as "en" or 
(a better example) "sr", which makes no specific allusions to the 
script, because it isn't "exact" enough.

Over-extending language tags or overburdening them with ancillary 
meaning does little good, while complicating the lives of users 
everywhere. Sometimes, simplicity is better than specificity.

Addison

-- 
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.
Chair -- W3C Internationalization Core WG

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 07:03:35 -0800

Addison Phillips <addison at yahoo dash inc dot com> wrote:

> The presence of a script subtag indicates that the associated content 
> is most likely textual and is written predominantly in that script. In 
> the absence of a script subtag, a language tag may still *imply* a 
> script in cases in which the content is text (that is, actually 
> written) and the language is predominantly written in a single script 
> (see: "Suppress-Script"), but this should not be taken to mean that 
> the content *must* be text (written).

Would it help to add an item to Section 4.1 (or elsewhere) stating that 
the absence of a script subtag may indicate non-written content, and 
should not automatically be interpreted as written content in the 
Suppress-Script?

I couldn't find any such text in the current draft, based on a 
two-minute search on "script".  I did find passages about not adding a 
script subtag unless it adds meaning to the tag, but that is an 
instruction to the tag generator (person or process), and what we 
apparently need is an instruction to the tag consumer.

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 17:11:58 +0100

Doug Ewell wrote:
 
> Would it help to add an item to Section 4.1 (or elsewhere) stating
> that the absence of a script subtag may indicate non-written content

No, that would be confusing.  Most pre-4646 tags have no script subtag,
because it didn't exist (excl. some Hans/Hant combinations, but that's
also relatively new).

An absent script subtag is no statement wrt. non-written content.  The
opposite is true, a present script subtag is nonsense for non-written
content.

okay : script subtag => written
okay : not written => no script subtag (see below)
wrong: no script subtag => not written
wrong: written => script subtag

> I did find passages about not adding a script subtag unless it adds 
> meaning to the tag

That probably reflects "not written => no script subtag".

> what we apparently need is an instruction to the tag consumer.

Tag consumer aren't supposed to interpret the absence of a script
subtag wrt written vs. not written.  If Karen wants this info within
the tags maybe she could use something like -x-text and -x-audio (?)

Frank