Subject: [Ltru] Re: ISO 639-2 decision: "mis"

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:36:39 -0700

I agree with Addison completely.  Unless Mark or someone else can find 
real-world examples of "mis" being used for a language that has its own ISO 
639 code element and/or language tag -- not hypothetical examples or 
extrapolations or theory -- there is no "narrowing" argument.  We have gone 
to great lengths to assert that "mis" isn't like the other collection codes, 
and now the JAC has made a decision which reflects that assertion.  Let's 
make the appropriate change to the Registry and be done with it.

--
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

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---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 08:50:59 -0700

Randy Presuhn <randy underscore presuhn at mindspring dot com> wrote:

>> MARC is an application context -- an application of language tags, not an 
>> application in the sense of a piece software. In that application 
>> context, only IDs from 639-2 can be used: that is a constraint on the 
>> range of language tags supported in that application context.
>
> As such, I'd argue that these constraints mean it isn't an application of 
> BCP 47.

I agree with Randy on this.  Section 2.2 of RFC 4646 says, "The Language 
Subtag Registry maintained by IANA is the source for valid subtags."  That 
is clear and unequivocal.

There will, of course, be systems and applications that are not fully 
conformant to BCP 47, with which conformant applications will have to 
interoperate, and that is fine and expected.  Those systems will impose 
their own restrictions.  Perhaps the worst cases are the simple-minded 
applications that assume a language tag must consist of a 2-letter language 
optionally followed by a hyphen and a 2-letter country, which isn't even 
conformant to RFC 1766.

But we are talking about making a change *to BCP 47 itself* that specifies 
the use of "mis" when the full Registry is not available, and that is not 
right.  Applications that have such a restriction, such as MARC apparently, 
do not attempt to conform to BCP 47, and so there is no point in putting 
text in BCP 47 that makes their limitations conformant.

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2007 09:36:54 -0700

GerardM <gerard dot meijssen at gmail dot com> wrote:

> Standards have a tendency to lag behind what is accepted to be true. When 
> a standard does not acknowledge a specific language of linguistic entity 
> yet because it is not in that version of the standard, a tag could be not 
> available because a specific version of standard has not been ratified 
> yet.

Responding to what I think Gerard's point is:

A language subtag MUST exist in the Language Subtag Registry, or be a 
private-use subtag or tag, in order to be used conformantly with RFC 4646. 
There is no provision in RFC 4646 for using two- and three-letter language 
subtags that are not in a past or present version of ISO 639-1 or -2 
(future: or -3) but are "accepted to be true" under some criterion.

This goes for other types of subtags as well.