Subject: RE: Ietf Digest, Vol 16, Issue 95

From: "Peter Constable" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 06:44:35 -0700

> From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>

> I am sorry to impose again the community, what starts amounting to
> ad-hominems. I am used to that, but the quality of the person and the
> serious looking of the mail calls for a reponse. In particular in
> this case, where two majors points are documented.
> Sorry, Peter. Please, Brian advise if inadequate.

My comments have not been ad hominem. If you feel they were in error,
please provide argumentation and evidence to that effect.

> He
> >has never provided any specific proposal except a request to permit
> >certain private-use tags, which I will return to below.
> 
> Dear Peter,
> This kind of repetition now abuse no one. I bored everyone enough in
> explaining that two additional subtags were necessary IMHO: the
> referent and the context. There is also - a way or another the need
> of the date of the reference (this can be a date or included in a
subtag).

To my recollection, you never gave any concrete proposal indicating how
this should be done. If you did, please indicate where in the archive,
and I will gladly withdraw that statement. I don't question that you
mentioned inclusion of such information within a language tag, but at
first glance this is the very kind of thing that *should* be in a
distinct attribute.

> Just in case: the langtag is not supposed to only support the
> written-form attributes, but to be multimodal (cf. Peter Constable).
> Please quote the voice, signs, icons, mood, etc. subtags.

For any question regarding how a distinction in linguistic variety or
written form should be reflected in a tag, the members of the WG
provided an answer.

> >Two comments: First, Mr. Morfin suggested within the LTRU WG that the
> >syntax for language tags should be loosened to permit additional
> >characters, such as "." and ":".
> 
> This is a false affirmation. I did two things...

> - I supported the proposition of an African searcher (they treated of
> troll)

Please indicate the name of the person you believe who made this
contribution, or point to the relevant part of the archives. To my
recollection this idea was promoted by "JFC Morfin", aka "Jefsey
Morfin", aka "Jean-Francois Charles Morfin", and by "F. Charles". Please
provide reason to believe that "F. Charles" is not the sock-puppet of
"Jean-Francoise Charles Morfin".

As has been mentioned, the request was rejected for technical, not
ad-hominem, reasons.

> The Draft addresses targets you defined a long ago. It was presented
> privately (twice) and is now presented as a WG document.  The
> document having not changed,

For clarification, the document underwent considerable change -- enough
to merit 12 drafts -- many changes being made in response to the
last-call comments on the earlier private drafts.

> In a nutshell, I do _not_ believe that a draft crafted by a few
> individuals can supports all the relevant distinctions needed to
> describe the linguistic and written-form attributes of content as may
> be needed for all purposes, commercial and otherwise.

In the six months since the WG was formed, you have not suggested any
distinctions that could not be made using the proposal in the draft and
that the WG found to be appropriate for integration into these tags. You
did suggest distinctions that were appropriate for these tags, but the
WG pointed out that they are already supported by the proposal.

> >- While Mr. Morfin cites ISO 11179, he has never made statements
> >   that clearly indicate that he actually understands those
standards.
> 
> I propose everyone having time to spend to read ISO 11179 and to
judge.

Since this was an opinion about your statements, they would need to read
both ISO 11179 and archives of the LTRU and IETF lists.

> In a recent mail, Peter acknowledged the need to consider ISO 11179
> and explained that ISO 12620 was its equivalent.

On the contrary, I indicated that TC37/SC2/WG1 had affirmed the choice
of the project team for ISO 639-6 to apply ISO 12620, a TC37 standard
that predates ISO 11179 but is being revised to make normative reference
to ISO 11179. This was in reporting activity of ISO TC37/SC2 and has no
direct bearing whatsoever on this draft or the work of the LTRU WG.

> >- While Mr. Morfin refers to "an ISO 11179 conformant system",
> >   none of the ISO 11179 series of standards contains any statement
> >   of conformance requirements. Thus, no such notion of "ISO 11179
> >   conformant" is defined anywhere.
> 
> :-) :-)
> 
> This is the second Historic statement!
> Too bad there is Google ....

My point was merely that conformance is not defined in any formal way,
therefore must be measured in terms of consistency with the conceptual
model, guidelines, administrative infrastructure, etc. described in
those standards. Your references do not in any way contradict this.

> >   All that can be said is that a
> >   system of metadata elements is maintained and administered using
> >   a certain amount of the conceptual model, practice and
> >   administrative infrastructure specified in the ISO 11179
standards.
> >   The draft uses some measure of these, though it does not make
> >   normative reference to ISO 11179.
> 
> This certainly explains the confusion with ISO 12620.

I have no idea what you consider to be confusion with ISO 12620. That
standard has never been referred to in the context of discussing this
draft until you mentioned it.

> >Rather,
> >   it was that it was not deemed that reference to ISO 11179 would
> >   add significant value in the context of an IETF language subtag
> >   registry. Taken together, the ISO 11179 standards are long and
> >   complex, and have not to our knowledge been referenced in any
> >   other IETF metadata registry
> 
> This is why we have to create a WG on that area.

I see no objection to creation of an IETF WG with a charter to consider
application of ISO 11179 in the context of registries that exist under
the terms of IETF documents.

> You do not need to sell your solution. I explained again and again I
> support it.
> 
> But do not say that it addresses my and other people's needs. It
> cannot be exclusive and exclude us all.

I have never said that the proposal in this draft meets all of your or
others' needs. All I have said is that the WG consensus was that it
supports all types of distinctions in linguistic variety or written form
that the WG is aware of that are appropriate for integration into a
single metadata element, and that this encompasses commercial and
non-commercial applications.

> You miss half the existing scripts,

The proposed language tags are able to support any difference in script.

> do not cover founts

Rightly so since fonts are a matter of presentation, not an attribute of
the "language" of content.

> and do not
> document anything of voice and signs.

The proposed language tags are able to support distinctions in spoken
form. They are able to identify signed languages; they are able to
distinguish between different written forms for signed languages. The
consensus of the WG was that the modality of expression (oral speech vs.
gestures vs. text) did not need to be reflected directly and as a
discrete component in these tags.

> Your proposition is not able to be multilingual,

The proposed tags are able to identify any human language. Tags are
metadata elements, not expressions of human language, and so do not
themselves need to be expressed in multiple languages. The documentation
in the registry can be translated by anyone who wishes. The WG did not
see any other respect in which multilinguality needed to be supported.

> http://ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
> "It is also expected to provide mechanisms to support the evolution
> of the underlying ISO standards, in particular ISO 639-3".
> 
> How do you read "evolution"? As far as I am concerned, we want to
> use, help, benefit from, etc. that evolution and do not want you to
> block us. "US" being all of us, and in particular my own team.

I'm not aware of any way your team is being blocked, except that a
request to permit characters such as "." and ":" within language tags
described by this draft was rejected.

> You seem now to want to tag your langtags with "ISO 11179" (soon we
> will learn they are "ISO 11179 inside"). Good!

All I have said is that the draft does not reference ISO 11179 but that
the proposed tags and registry can reasonably be said to be consistent
with the conceptual model etc described in ISO 11179.

> >Mr. Morfin submitted a request to the WG that these terms be defined.
> >The consensus of everyone else in the WG was that this was not
necessary
> >since it would not significantly alter the ability of anyone to
> >implement or use the specification.
> 
> May I just quote your response in another mail ....

You may.

> <quote>
> 
> > > I agree that the broad question of "what is a language" is out of
our
> > > scope. The more specific question "what is a taggable language
> > > distinction" is perhaps more germane.
> >
> >Not an unreasonable suggestion.
> 
> </quote>

I do not consider these to be inconsistent.

Peter Contable

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---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 16:48:32 +0200

If we are reading here about a point of view that was expressed within
the WG, and that the WG did not accept, that seems to be clear enough
for the purposes of a Last Call. I think discussion of details and
of the history could be conducted on the WG list.

     Brian