Subject: RE: draft-phillips-langtags-08, process, sp ecifications, "stability", and extensions

From: "Peter Constable" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 12:14:16 -0800

> From: Dave Singer [mailto:[email-masked]]

> Sorry, I should have gone on to conclude:  the important aspect of
> sub-tags is that their nature and purpose be identifiable and
> explained (e.g. that this is a country code), and that we retain
> compatibility with previous specifications.

Ah! Then the proposed draft ensures that the nature of subtags are
always identifiable, which RFC 3066 (as I mentioned earlier) fails to
do. 

And the draft retains compatibility with previous specifications using
an assumption (thoroughly discussed and concluded on the IETF-languages
list a year ago) that, in case of left-prefix matching processes, script
distinctions are generally far more important that country distinctions.

> I don't believe that simple
> truncation is a necessarily useful operation in all circumstances,

I don't think anyone would dispute that.

> and it probably should not be in the spec. at all.  For example, I'd
> say that we should retain the 3066 ordering of language-country and
> therefore script, if needed, comes later.  However, my typesetting
> subsystem doesn't care a jot about language or country, it just needs
> to find the script code ('can I render this script'?).

Here I disagree. For other purposes, I think it's very clear that the
only time that choice of order matters is with matching algorithms that
use simple truncation, and for the most common implementations, which
use left-prefix truncation, the order lang-script-country will be far
more useful in the long run precisely because script distinctions are
generally far more important in matching than country distinctions. I
don't know of any case in which a tag might be used that contained all
three subtags but in which the country distinction generally matters
more than the script distinction.

Peter Constable

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From: Dave Singer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 12:35:52 -0800

>distinctions are generally far more important that country distinctions.

as has been beautifully pointed out on the list, that is a view that 
is lingo-centric.  If what I am trying to differentiate is the price 
(and the currency of the price) of an item, the country may be much 
more important than the script that the price is written in.  (this 
is also an example for the last point below).  I repeat, I don't 
think truncation -- and hence prefix-matching -- is very stable or 
nearly universally applicable enough to be mentioned.  Whereas I do 
believe compatibility of ordering with 3066 is important.

-- 
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime

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From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 15:50:10 -0500

Dave Singer scripsit:

> is also an example for the last point below).

Using the language-tag to retrieve the country implicitly referenced
in the content is far more unreliable than prefix-matching.  Just
because this document is written in en-US doesn't mean I can't
refer to the price of some consumer device as 200,000 yen.

> I repeat, I don't 
> nearly universally applicable enough to be mentioned.

It's there to clarify the rule already given in RFC 3066.

> Whereas I do 

RFC 3066 already supports tags that don't fit.

-- 
John Cowan  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan  [email-masked]
Arise, you prisoners of Windows / Arise, you slaves of Redmond, Wash,
The day and hour soon are coming / When all the IT folks say "Gosh!"
It isn't from a clever lawsuit / That Windowsland will finally fall,
But thousands writing open source code / Like mice who nibble through a wall.
        --The Linux-nationale by Greg Baker

---

From: Dave Singer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 15:39:14 -0800

I'm sorry, this example I gave doesn't correspond to *language* 
matching.  My error. My apologies.

(Nor should my questions on this subject be seen as suggesting either 
that I as an individual, or particularly Apple as a company, is 
unhappy revising RFC 3066.)

-- 
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime