Subject: Re: [Ltru] Re: "Placeholder" dates in draft Registry

From: Gerard Meijssen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:32:11 +0100

Hoi,

There is some sense to using only the standard Latin characters standard 
numbers. It means very much that you do restrict yourself on how you 
describe languages. In the ISO-639-3 there are words for languages with 
characters that are outside of this. A good example is ||Gana. This is 
the official label. There are alternate names, G||ana, G||ana-Khwe, 
Gxana, Gxanna, Dxana, Kanakhoe. Some of these would serve well where the 
current placeholder for the name is awful. The "pipe" character kills 
the potential for many automated functions. It is not even the character 
that does indicate the click sound. IMHO it is a bad choice for what is 
essentially a list of codes and labels that indicates languages.

In many of what I have read people try to read all kinds of things in 
the codes that are used. It is a human thing  to do. However, again in 
my honest opinion, it is horrible, there are codes that give me a 
chuckle because what such a good means to me ... in Dutch. When codes 
are just that, something small referring to something complex that is 
used for identification, it makes no difference if it says uk or eng or 
fr or de. The point is, as a human you should not want to read anything 
in the code itself.

With ISO-639-1 and -2 it was possible to know most codes without having 
to look them up. With the 7000+ of the ISO-639-3 it is much harder and 
with the ISO-639-6 it will be impossible. ISO-639-6 will be good in that 
it recognises the existing codes of the ISO-639-1, 2 and 3. The argument 
here; they are codes do not try to read any meaning in them. The same is 
true for the names of the entities the codes refer to, they are labels 
they should fit certain restraints and the use of characters like the "|" 
is wrong/not helpful.

Thanks,
   GerardM

Frank Ellermann schreef:
> Doug Ewell wrote:
>
>   
>>>> dates later than 2038 are hard for many systems to handle.
>>>>         
>
>   
>>> Then it's a good test, like 2106-02-08... <eg>
>>>       
>  
>   
>> Problem is, it's a test of the wrong thing -- how well your OS
>> handles dates, not how your application handles the Registry.
>>     
>
> Point.  
>
> That argument works also for "NCRs good" vs. "UTF-8 not yet":
>
> If users want to see the raw registry on their mobile device
> it's not the moment to ask them to install some fonts with
> African click characters or what else first.
>
> Frank

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