Subject: [Ltru] Re: Archival of registration forms

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 08:03:33 -0700

The Language Subtag Registration Form, originally submitted by the 
proposer for additions and changes NOT triggered by change to the core 
standards, is shown in Figure 5 of RFC 4646 (Section 3.5, page 30 in the 
plain-text version).  This form has NOT been sent to IANA thus far.

What we have been sending to IANA is the Language Subtag Modification 
Form shown in Figure 4 (Section 3.3, page 25 in the plain-text version).

My understanding was that the Registration Form was intended for the 
proposer to present the new subtag and explain its usage and context and 
history and references to the ietf-languages list, to help the Reviewer 
and other list members evaluate the subtag and raise questions.  I 
further understood that the *record* to be added or changed in the 
Registry was what was to be sent to IANA:

"When the two-week period has passed, the Language Subtag Reviewer 
either forwards the record to be inserted or modified to [email-masked] 
according to the procedure described in Section 3.3, or rejects the 
request because of significant objections raised on the list or due to 
problems with constraints in this document (which MUST be explicitly 
cited)."  (Section 3.5)

"When either a change or addition to the registry is needed, the 
Language Subtag Reviewer MUST prepare the complete record, including all 
fields, and forward it to IANA for insertion into the registry.  Each 
record being modified or inserted MUST be forwarded in a separate 
message."  (Section 3.3)

It was thought that sending additional information to IANA that was not 
intended for insertion into the Registry, such as the requester's name 
and e-mail address and extensive bibliographic references, would result 
in confusion on the part of IANA and possible errors in the Registry.

I recognize that this conflicts with the wording in in Section 3.5 which 
spurred this thread:

"All approved registration forms are available online in the directory 
http://www.iana.org/numbers.html under 'languages'."

It seems to me that if IANA needs to archive (which I assume also means 
"make publicly available") the original registration forms, then there 
is substantial duplication between the two forms in Figure 4 and Figure 
5 that needs to be resolved.  It needs to be clear to IANA which 
information is to be added to the Registry and which is not.  I think 
this is an ideal time to review the two forms and possibly consolidate 
them for RFC 4646bis.

If desired, I can go through the ietf-languages archives and find the 
original Registration Forms for changes made since the launch date 
(October 2005).  It is important to realize that we have *not* been 
making changes to the original form, much less requiring the original 
submitter to make them, to reflect changes to the request that have 
resulted from list discussion.  We will need to decide how to resolve 
any differences, if at all, and we should probably do all of this on the 
list to ensure transparency and openness and avoid disputes, as Addison 
pointed out.

I want to emphasize that any deviations from RFC 4646 for which I am 
responsible, as Michael's unofficial golf caddy, have been in the 
interest of getting the requester's subtags registered and maintaining 
the intended form and function of Registry entries as I understand it. 
Michael and I did edit down the Comments field in Reşat's recenty 
approved subtag, to reduce the number of words while keeping all of the 
alternative names he listed.  I imagine that with IANA archiving of the 
registration forms, for past and future registrations, the perceived 
need to put all of this in the Registry may be reduced.

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

_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 01:14:02 -0400

> in confusion on the part of IANA and possible errors in the Registry.

They seemed to manage it all right in the 1766/3066 era, keeping both
short explanations at http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-tags
and full registration forms with name, email, and biblio at
the directory http://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-tags/ .

It's true that the former is technically redundant with the latter,
but both are useful.  The LSR correspons to the latter, but nothing
corresponds to the former, and we may need the contents of it in
future.

> this is an ideal time to review the two forms and possibly consolidate 

+1

-- 
John Cowan  [email-masked]  http://ccil.org/~cowan
Any sufficiently-complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc,
informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
        --Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming (rules 1-9 are unknown)

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:55:55 -0700

John Cowan <cowan at ccil dot org> wrote:

>> It was thought that sending additional information to IANA that was 
>> not intended for insertion into the Registry, such as the requester's 
>> name and e-mail address and extensive bibliographic references, would 
>> result in confusion on the part of IANA and possible errors in the 
>> Registry.
>
> and full registration forms with name, email, and biblio at the 
> directory http://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-tags/ .

I was always singularly unimpressed with the level of maintenance of the 
1766/3066 files.  The summary file and the directory of reg forms didn't 
always keep pace with each other; even to this day you will not find the 
registration forms for "el-Latn" and "sgn-NI" and "sl-nedis" in the 
directory although they are listed in the summary file.

The names didn't always match either: for "i-default" the registration 
form has "Default Language" but on the summary file it is listed as 
"Default Language Context."  (How much of a battle would a minor 
discrepancy like that cause today, when a new registration is being 
delayed over a single word in a comment!)

Actually there were three reference sources at the time, if you count 
the page on Michael's Web site, which didn't match either of the IANA 
sources exactly.

It's partly because of the lackadaisical maintenance of the 3066 
registration forms that I was so strongly in favor of a single, 
all-inclusive registry back when it was first proposed in 2004.

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:07:36 +0200

[ietf-languages suppressed since we embark in actual changes to
4646bis]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2007 at 08:03:33AM -0700,
 Doug Ewell <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 78 lines which said:

> This form has NOT been sent to IANA thus far.
...
> proposer to present the new subtag and explain its usage and context 
...
> I recognize that this conflicts with the wording in in Section 3.5 which 

OK, so, how I see it after this discussion is that there are several
ways to resolve the discrepancy between what's is in RFC 4646 and the
reality. Before I start submitting patches to 4646bis, I would like to
collect opinions on the following strategies for LTRU:

1) Small modification to 4646bis, section 3.5, to make clear that IANA
does not receive the form (and therefore does not archive it) but only
the record (which will go "as is" in the registry). If I understand
well, that's Doug Ewell's opinion.

2) Same as 1) *plus* an obligation for the LSR or the submitter to
post the *final* form on ietf-languages so it is archived and
accessible (without involving IANA).

3) Modification to 4646bis, section 3.3 and 3.5 to make crystal-clear
that IANA receives the *form*, not just the record and make it
available, both in the registry and in a to-be-determined
repository. (Apparently the way it was supposed to work in RFC 3066).

My personal preference goes to 3), with 2) as a reasonable backup.

Opinions?

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:37:40 -0700

Hi -

> From: "Stephane Bortzmeyer" <[email-masked]>
> To: "LTRU Working Group" <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 2:07 AM
> Subject: [Ltru] Re: Archival of registration forms
...
> My personal preference goes to 3), with 2) as a reasonable backup.

As a technical contributor, I prefer option (3), since it preserves
the intent of what was written in RFC 4646.

Randy

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:56:28 +0200

> the intent of what was written in RFC 4646.

Same here.  If Doug or IANA hate it something like (2) is also okay.

Frank