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

From: "Peter Constable" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 11:34:25 -0800

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

> >This is similar to the reason why the language code comes before the
country
> >code. If we had the order CH-fr, then we could end up mixing French
and
> >German in the same page, because we would fall back (for one of the
data
> >sources) from CH-fr to CH, which could be German.
> 
> It has to be application-specific which fallback happens.  If the
> user says he's swiss french, and the the content has alternative
> offers for swiss german or french french, which do you present?  If
> the content actually differs for legal or geographic reasons ('the
> legal representative in your country is', 'for copyright reasons this
> edition differs in material ways from other countries'), then the
> correct country but wrong language is the best answer.  If the desire
> is simply for maximum intelligibility, then the reverse is true.

But that is a level of decision making that goes well beyond any
algorithm that simply uses truncation of tags, which is the only case in
which the ordering of sub-tags matters.

Peter Constable

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From: Dave Singer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 11:51:10 -0800

>which the ordering of sub-tags matters.

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.  This tagging uses order 
(and size) of sub-tags rather than explicit labels to say what 
something is, and we're stuck with that.  I don't believe that simple 
truncation is a necessarily useful operation in all circumstances, 
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'?).

This spec. should unambiguously allow me to extract the language, 
country, script etc., should say under what circumstances two 
sub-tags of any type match, state the obvious that two tags exactly 
match if they have the same sub-tags and they all match, that partial 
perfect matches (of tags with differing numbers of sub-tags) are 
possible and may be applicable, and that the use of imperfect matches 
(in which not all sub-tags match) has to be application-specific. 
Examples of why on the latter would be helpful.
-- 
David Singer
Apple Computer/QuickTime

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From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 15:22:13 -0500

Dave Singer scripsit:

> country, script etc.,

It does (and RFC 3066 does not).

> should say under what circumstances two 

Except for the point that tags match if they are (case-insensitively)
identical, which is already made, we don't believe that any of these
other things can be normatively enunciated.

-- 
Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies!    John Cowan <[email-masked]>
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Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan  
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