Subject: [Ltru] Re: Frank's comments (was: Re: proto-draft-10)

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 06:51:12 -0800

Kent Karlsson <kent dot karlsson14 at comhem dot se> wrote:

> I don't much mind adding *ALL* of the "exceptionally reserved" codes,
> but then it should be *ALL* of them (in particular including "UK",
> as deprecated with a preferred value, which currently is strangely
> excluded).

RFC 4646 (section 3.4, item 8) says we don't add exact synonyms.

"in" and "iw" and friends are there because they appeared in the 1988 
version of ISO 639, which was cited by RFC 1766 (1995) and 3066 (2001). 
The fact that they has been withdrawn from ISO 639 in 1989 apparently 
didn't play into this.

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

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---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 07:00:20 -0800

Frank Ellermann <nobody at xyzzy dot claranet dot de> wrote:

> [i-sealand]
>> They speak, or spoke, English there, and maybe a bit of
>> Dutch.  Countries aren't the issue: languages are.
>
> And a bit of de-x-nazi at a critical period of the post-war
> Sealand history.  At later periods they might have spoken
> anything resulting in an increased pagerank for their Web
> pages and related activities (selling passports, etc.)

If you mean something like <span lang="de-x-nazi">Endlösung der 
Judenfrage</span> then this is specialized jargon, on a par with:

<span lang="en-x-baseball">Smith flied to left with two out.</span>
<span lang="en-x-labor">This is an organized shop.</span>

and whatever your favorite "Eurocrat" jargon might be.  Only in the last 
case have we decided this is a taggable distinction.

> There's no substantial difference between micronation and
> registered language, sooner or later somebody will try it
> for (putting it mildly) non-linguistic purposes.

Then it's the Reviewer's job, perhaps with help from the ietf-languages 
list members, to see through the ruse and refuse to register such a 
subtag.

---

From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 03:13:13 +0100

Doug Ewell wrote:

> If you mean something like <span lang="de-x-nazi">Endlösung
> der Judenfrage</span> then this is specialized jargon

Yeah (maybe the occupants of Sealand were not that mad, the
continued existence of the 3rd Reich is a legal fiction, and
a different crackpot faction, the Sealand occupants and the
3rd Reich group "recognized" each other "diplomatically", or
something in this direction).  Possibly Sealand still has a
"government in exile" (i.e. the former occupants, not more
related to the "Prince" and the "real" government of Sealand
- I didn't follow what happened after a fire destroyed the
generators of the "Sealand" platform in 2006)

> Then it's the Reviewer's job, perhaps with help from the 
> ietf-languages list members, to see through the ruse and
> refuse to register such a subtag.

They can be very persistent :-(  Of course the syntactical
structure of "i-whatever" vs. "whatever" won't help in this
regard, I just like "i-whatever" better for various reasons.

 Frank

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 07:18:21 -0800

Frank Ellermann <nobody at xyzzy dot claranet dot de> wrote:

>> Do we need to provide a definition of the Latin script?
>
> My definition is simple:  MES-1, optionally plus a few glyphs used on 
> a "popular" platform.  What's your definition, Latin-1 ?

Not at all.  If I thought it was unclear, I would probably use the 
Unicode (UAX #24) definition: all characters in the string have script 
value 'Latn' or 'Zyyy" (Common) or "Qaai' (Inherited).

The reloaded 4645bis Registry will contain some language subtags with 
only one Description field, which is not pure Latin-1.  These are things 
like a-with-macron and s-with-dot-below, for some Indian languages. 
This is still Latin.

> Okay.  So what does the new MUSTard in the draft ?  Is it about the 
> variants or "registered languages", and why would anybody want say 
> some fonipa transliteration in addition to the description(s) offered 
> by the requester ?  What's special with "Latn" in a broad Unicode 
> sense, why no Kore, Jpan, or Brai ?  For RFC 4646 we made sure that we 
> have _no_ prejudice for Latn, and permit (in theory) all code points.

Description fields are permitted in any imaginable script.  But one of 
the fields for a given subtag has to be in the Latin script.

> You hit an example that I can read, therefore I recall that the review 
> list managed this registration without a new MUST.

Rules are better than relying on enlightened statesmen.

>>> It still contains the unused 5*8ALPHA "registered languages" instead 
>>> of reviving the good tradition of i-whatever tags for this in the 
>>> times of 639-3 likely unnecessary loophole.
>
>> I don't believe there is any popular sympathy, let alone consensus, 
>> to change this.  I wonder why you would call out Addison for not 
>> changing it.
>
> My list contained only one point wrt consensus, the disputed 
> territories.  It was a summary of my objections + rationale.

I understand this.  What I don't understand is why you mentioned "it 
still contains the registered language subtags."  Of course it does; 
there was no agreement to change this.

> IIRC we discussed cases of splits later re-uniting again for RFC 4646, 
> e.g. a new incarnation of YU, or CS.  And I thought that we made sure 
> that this will work as everybody would expect it.

As I said, I think this issue deserves serious discussion.  I don't 
recall it being discussed before.  But once we do reach a decision --  
preferably certified by a chair-declared consensus -- we should stick 
with it and not reopen the issue.

> The "most perverse tag" has two variants.  With fonipa or fonupa it's 
> in theory three, or even four if a pervert manages to use fonipa and 
> fonupa simultaneously.

Tag content wisely.

> Just an example, for 4646 we discussed generic north south westx eastx 
> and similar cases arriving at SHOULD NOT, after fonipa and company I'm 
> ready for MUST NOT.

'north' and 'south' and company, used generically, are not clearly 
defined.  Sometimes the concepts are clearly defined when used with a 
specific language, such as Armenian, but not in other cases.  How would 
one define "de-DE-north" and "de-DE-south"?

IPA and UPA are a completely different matter.  It is very clear when a 
non-trivial passage of text is written in IPA.

>> You're probably more likely to see a 5- to 8-letter registered 
>> language subtag before you see an extension.  The barriers to 
>> creating an extension are just too high.
>
> With a MUST NOT for generic variants folks might manage it.   If more 
> cases like fonipa + fonupa are identified maybe it will result in the 
> first extension.   Arguably better than more generic variants, each 
> extension can have its own rules.  It's hard to decide if 1996 and 
> fonupa in the same tag could make sense or not, and what the best 
> order should be.

Don't forget, I argued for extensions for the IPA/UPA case.  The 
reaction was clear, from both the LTRU and ietf-languages lists: nobody 
wanted to see extensions used for this.