Subject: [Ltru] Re: W3C tag policy disclaimers and IETF RFCs

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 21:19:20 -0700

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

> Fair enough, 3066bis doesn't allow a digit as singleton

Yes it does:

singleton     = %x41-57 / %x59-5A / %x61-77 / %x79-7A / DIGIT
              ; "a"-"w" / "y"-"z" / "A"-"W" / "Y"-"Z" / "0"-"9"
              ; Single letters: x/X is reserved for private use

The text in Section 3.6 continually refers to "single-letter subtags,"
left over from the days before the ABNF was expanded to allow digits (I
forget when this was).  Judging from all the attention this ABNF has
gotten, I'd say the correct move is to trust the ABNF over the prose.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/

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---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 08:02:30 +0200

> singleton     = %x41-57 / %x59-5A / %x61-77 / %x79-7A / DIGIT

Sigh, and I thought that I know the ABNF by heart.  So far for
that idea.  Jefsey has to pick another "escape" character for
his "not-3066bis-scheme".  Maybe "!" or "$".

> left over from the days before the ABNF was expanded to allow
> digits (I forget when this was).

Added in -01, in -00 it was still without DIGIT.  No idea what
the old pre-LTRU drafts did, I don't find them anymore on
Addison's pages.

> Judging from all the attention this ABNF has gotten, I'd say
> the correct move is to trust the ABNF over the prose.

Yes, although I must admit that I don't recall _why_ DIGIT was
added.  John proposed to sort extensions alphabetically, and
IIRC we discussed to exclude "y" and "z" - both ideas were
rejected.  I wanted "x" instead of "x" / "X" because in ABNF
"x" is already case insensitive, also rejected, and that's all
I can say without digging through the archive.

                          Bye, Frank

---

From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 15:05:06 +0200

Structural comment below. For Members' coporate people.

>I can say without digging through the archive.

Dear Frank,
RFC 3066 permitted digits in subtags. What Doug says is "I cannot support 
it in the document I write since I did not write that I would". This kind 
of position will obviously not hold for ever in front of IESG, IAB, GAC, 
WTO, but if can confuse people enough to hold for years. This is why I am 
spending so much time explaining the obvious again and again. To give 
"lawyers" quotes enough to discuss the bad or the good faith of the authors.

ABNF is not the point. You may note that only you and Lee, who are 
motivated in finding a technical solution, in an IETF fashion, are 
seriously following this technical thread. The point is political and 
commercial.

Why? And is it bad or not?

Just try to figure out who are the customers here. Who has money in 
language related industries? Who print, sell and buy books? Typographers, 
Publishers and Libraries. What is their common target? To sell/rent books 
to readers. Who are the readers? More and more Internet users. The 
customers of the book industries evade books. Two things to do: cheaper 
books and to move the book industry into the internet (and in so doing try 
to protect the existing market repartition and to invade the share of the 
slow movers) with the minimum of compromise with the natives (Yahoo!, 
Google, etc.)

Study http://www.unicode.org/history/boardmembers.html and 
http://www.unicode.org/consortium/directors.html. Unicode is certainly the 
most active and talented (*) place where this concerns can be discussed and 
acted upon. It certainly gathers representatives from the market and 
customer leaders. It is likely that its propositions carry enormous weight, 
but also call for serious political attention. This attention is from the 
competition and the partners of its Directors and Executives corporations, 
from cultural authorities. It is from Governments, due to this weight and 
the possible direct or indirect impact on the most sensitive human areas: 
culture, civilisation memory, political influence, religion, human 
relations, etc. You may have noted the force and the speed of the European 
reactions to the Google digital library announcement.

(*) Some individual members are: Harald Alvestrand, John Cowan, Martin 
Dürst, Doug Ewell, Jean-François Morfin; some corporate Members (whose 
employees also form the broad majority of the consortium directors and 
executives) are: RLG (whose BoD Member is the only one to stay from the 
very beginning), Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Cisco. Verisign just joined as a 
Member.

What is the target of the people gathered in Unicode? "The Unicode 
Consortium is a non-profit organisation founded to develop, extend and 
promote use of the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of 
text in modern software products and standards." Unicode is therefore an 
active participant to the W3C (web standards) and to ISO (international 
standards).

Now, read http://ietf.org/overview.html. It starts saying "The Internet 
Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large open international community of 
network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the 
evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the 
Internet."

The first problem is here. Unicode (Mark Davis' culture) is about 
characters in texts and W3C (Addison Philips' cultures) is about Web 
i.e.  modern software to print/display/speak texts. But IETF is about 
Internet architecture and the Draft does not bridge the huge gap between 
one of the network application, however big it is and however historically 
rooted it is, and the network architecture. The only way they have to keep 
them together is to "constrain" the network into their typographer/printer 
culture. This obviously cannot work. Typographer, printer and bookstores 
chains are different trades.

The second problem is that the customers needs are outdated and the book 
industry does not know how to match our time's challenge. People like Peter 
Constable and me certainly try to help in our own ways - him as an 
employee, me as an applied searcher. This is the very same problem as 
Telcos and music publishers. Book publishers and Libraries have been 
impacted more slowly and for a longer time than Music publishers and Media, 
but the problem is similar. Music publishers introduced RPM, iPod, etc. 
Book Publishers and Libraries introduce RFIDs and langtags.

Is that a bad idea? No.

It even looks very promising both for Libraries and Publishers, and for 
software and service providers. A unique basis to build good organisation 
and market protection control. Every text can be tagged with a langtag; we 
will find them everywhere (RFID on the books in bookstores, Libraries, 
Colleges, etc. Operating System locales - Windows and Linux alike) with an 
easy to add ISSN when printed. The catalogues, management, organisation 
savings can be huge for publishers, libraries etc. This is very urgent 
while the printer increasingly challenges the book. The need is to level 
the practical cost of satisfaction of a book and of a printout; and to get 
the copyrights paid in both cases. Same problem as Sony and Napster. The 
solution is like iPod: the library of Congress on an USB iLib, which can 
plug on any bookprinter to come, and stay compatible whatever the version 
of text over the centuries.

At the same time, the langtags makes it easier to rush down the web, 
reading every web page, sorting them by langtags, reading them for 
incorrect words, copyright infringement, etc. and printing the daily 
police/lawyer report for copyright actions.

I obviously only give rough lines and do not go into the details of the way 
it helps reducing costs, improving quality, increasing security etc. 
through system convergence, simplification, etc.

So, you understand why this Jefsey is a very bad/poor stupid troll, making 
"industry" to waste huge amounts of money with his "delaying practices".

You also understand that if his "0-" were to be accepted the whole scheme 
would be useless. The whole thing is format exclusiveness, so _every_ book 
and page in the world can fit in a unique industry controlled format.

Every other attempt MUST be excluded. And here is the huge "but". Because 
it scale and stay.

The supposed retrocompatibility obligation with a never used format is only 
a bluff. This is probably one of the reasons why the WG-ltru never wanted 
to consider its Charter. The Charter says something quite different: "It is 
expected to specify a mechanism for easily identifying the role of each 
subtag in the language tag, so that, for example, whenever a script code or 
country code is present in the tag it can be extracted, even without access 
to a current version of the registry. Such a mechanism would clearly 
distinguish between well-formed and valid language tags, to allow for 
maximal compatibility between implementations released at different times, 
and thus using different versions of the registry."

Jefsey is also quite worrying. Because he works on the matter for 30 years 
(among other things, I came to networking in 1976 in discussing with Xerox, 
Compugraphic, etc. about an international network to print books. I studied 
in 1979 with all the large newspapers not printing photos - Le Monde, la 
Stampa, Die Welt, etc. - simultaneous locale editions over the 
international public network. I managed my own daily economical newsfaxer 
during five years, with editions on Minitel, professional papers, etc.). He 
knows networks (I am first a Navy communication officer dealing with secure 
world networks since 1971). He possibly has the technical user-centric 
architecture to change all that (I do). He knows the future; and the future 
he knows is probably quite different from the past the industry wants to 
protect (it extends it, it does not kill it). No way to permit his ideas 
and demands through. He must be excluded. Whatever the way (including 
anonymous telephone threads, what next?).

Another problem with Jefsey: he is no English mother-tongue. So he knows 
more and he is engaged into structures, solutions, propositions that do not 
want to use English as the language of reference. This is quite worrying 
for several reasons.

- One reason is that industry is mainly US driven and has no collective 
knowledge, experience and practice of languages at this level. 
Multilingualism is a difficult and complex area. Stakeholders prefer to 
address it as an internationalisation+localisation 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-itsreq-20050805  which permits them (they 
think, but this is one of the main technical error by lack of complete 
analysis and modelisation) to simplify the issue and to control it from the 
computer root (via CLDR: the control of locale files).

- Another reason is that the industry is also conducted by market leaders 
which happen to be Americans and therefore to benefit from the American 
commercial environment, and which are under European scrutiny for possible 
market dominant position.

- Multilingualism is also a threat of balkanisation of the network which 
would kill the acquired vision of the network and would remove the partial 
protection provided by "an American built Internet" Hollywood story (Jefsey 
knows the truth: danger). You can sue a Chinese in the US for having 
violated a copyright on the Internet. This is more difficult if the 
violation was on the "Chinese Internet", with Chinese domain names. The law 
will be the same, the eventual decision will be the same, but the cost 
balance will switch: it will be cheaper to the Chinese user,  and more 
expansive to the multinational stakeholder.

Another problem with Jefsey is that he only considers the "Web" as one 
application on the network and not as the main system. The langtags MUST be 
the internal core of the Internet system to be on every text. Or the scheme 
will never be powerfull enough to work.

There are obviously many other problems with Jefsey. I just wanted to quote 
some. A last worrying one: he is impressed by technical pertinence and 
vision, not by corporate positions.

Now, I explained the why, may be interesting to discuss the bad/good issue.

As often in period of dramatic industrial changes, industries fight for 
survival in making incorrect short-sighted choices based upon immediate 
self-protection (innovative quick consensus is quite unusual). The way to 
best help them is to accompany their change, in first trying to understand 
its reasons. Often, as in this case, the change proceed in several phases 
due to the hysteresis of the interaction with technology and users: timing 
is important. In fighting my graduated propositions to carefully move from 
one step to an other, the Draft affinity group actually represents a huge 
danger for the industry it wants to protect. They waste time and modern 
solutions in fighting the last war. One can easily see that by the lack of 
definition of the terms they use: it would show they confuse the contexts. 
As a consequence their  resulting proposition will not be acceptable to 
their competition, to their market partners, to governments etc. and is of 
no real interest to their "end-users" (an old notion they have not yet 
departed from).

It is not far. But it is not acceptable. A simple explanation is that they 
start from where they come from (typographers) instead of considering where 
they want to arrive (distributed networks). Also, that they have a wrong 
economical model. Their model is to reduce costs through simplification, 
what means rigidity. This could work if the market was dwindling. But the 
market is exploding. But not exploding in the way they see it 
(publishing/rending stocked books), but in the way the users see it 
(multimedia access to knowledge). Scalability and simplicity are confused 
with limitation: they do not mean less options; they mean an infinite 
number of easy to get options and only a few built-in defaults.

I must say they are not helped by the current status of the world thinking. 
The WSIS is a major misconception for them. "Information" is currently 
understood as a mix between technical data and French 1960 "informatique". 
The WSIS was initially a first attempt by librarians to address their 
problem. It went out of their control. For the same reason why langtags are 
to escape them. The problem is new, complex and a past protection approach 
can only be increasingly inadequate. What they need is a solid, open, 
stable, innovative and secure generalised network framework, where they can 
lodge their own solutions. Unfortunately the Internet does not fully 
deliver it, yet. This is why before addressing the book industry needs the 
International Network system must first become a Multilingual Global NGN. 
The advantage of Majors over Unicode is that Music is a unique universal 
languages. But pictures are multilingual - with a larger possible diversity 
of languages than texts. MPEG should be included in the analysis.

The solution IMHO is to proceed step by step. Considering immediate 
interests, ending with exclusion but carefully discussing timing, 
experimentation and deployment areas. Until one can agree on a future 
economical model. We can discuss that too.

It will necessarily include the convergence of various forms of 
data-providers (search engines, domain names, libraries, mail, etc.), of 
content structures (architexts, multimedia, services), storing 
(memorisation technologies are a key issue), o payment means (probably a 
secure micro payment support). etc. Then the common standard MUST address 
the need of EVERYONE. Because it is legal, the IETF objective, but most of 
all because it is business efficient in a network.

And, what if Jefsey finds a trick to proceed otherwise?
Take care.
jfc

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 07:33:53 -0700

I agree. A minor editorial fix would be to correct 'letter' to 'character'
in those cases.

‎Mark

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 01:38:31 +0200

r&d afrac wrote:

> RFC 3066 permitted digits in subtags.

We're talking about singletons, RfC 3066 says:

 [primary subtag]
| The value "i" is reserved for IANA-defined registrations
| The value "x" is reserved for private use.  Subtags of "x"
| shall not be registered by the IANA.
| Other values shall not be assigned except by revision of
| this standard.

Either "i-" or "x-" or more letters, no single DIGIT.

 [secondary subtag]
| Tags with 1-letter second subtags may not be assigned
| except after revision of this standard.

No single letter or DIGIT.  The first position where a single
letter or DIGIT was allowed was the third subtag.  I recall it
now, we discused it here, that's why the single DIGIT was
added for future extension subtags.

And because 3066bis is a revision of "this standard" - wow, a
sure kill for any 3066 last call - we're free to allow it also
in the second position.

But not in the first, exactly as the 3066bis ABNF does, it's
correct.  Addison could s/letter/letter or digit/ exactly
where Doug found it in the prose.

> What Doug says is "I cannot support it in the document I
> write since I did not write that I would".

After five months you're supposed to know who writes which
document.  Addison or Mark fixed the missing DIGIT, not Doug.

> This kind of position will obviously not hold for ever in
> front of IESG, IAB, GAC, WTO

It might also cause serious problems with the KERC (Klingon
Equal Rights Commission), they'll insist on a singleton € ;-)

> This is why I am spending so much time explaining the
> obvious again and again. To give "lawyers" quotes enough
> to discuss the bad or the good faith of the authors.

There's nothing wrong with the authors, aim higher.

> ABNF is not the point.

IBTD.  Sometimes I can see the ideas behind the ABNF, where
the prose is only MUSTardized irrelevant whishful thinking
(that remark wasn't about the drafts here).

> The point is political and commercial.

It's technically sound and causes no harm, unlike this beast:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/public/pidtracker.cgi?command=print_ballot&ballot_id=1573&filename=draft-lyon-senderid-core

> http://www.unicode.org/consortium/directors.html

Thanks, I didn't know these links.  I sometiems check corporate
members for DoubleClick or SpamCast (guess why).  Unicode is a
white hat, see http://www.unicode.org/consortium/memblist.html

> So, you understand why this Jefsey is a very bad/poor stupid
> troll, making "industry" to waste huge amounts of money with
> his "delaying practices".

I'm not worried about your activities, but I do get angry if
you insult or even harrass others as you tried it with John.

Each WG needs its resident kook, it helps to focus - without
you we could be tempted to get arried away inventing wild and
wonderful things that nobody wants or needs.

Disclaimer:  It was less useful when you wasted Martin's or
Randy's time, they're not free to click NEXT whenever they feel
like it.  Your articles tend to be too long  (nothing personal,
I have the same problem, but it's bad, after 50 lines readers
give up and click NEXT).

> The whole thing is format exclusiveness, so _every_ book

While we're "not" discussing personal problems, if somebody is
apparently more paranoid than I am I think it's a bit too much.

> The supposed retrocompatibility obligation with a never used
> format is only a bluff.

IBTD.  Ira, Ned, and I insisted on the "Suppress-Script" for
maximal backwards compatibility, _not_ Addison or Mark, they
hated it.  And JFTR, nobody paid me for my opinions here.  It
is just what I think how this stuff could work in all contexts
I'm somewhat familiar with.
                              Bye, Frank