Subject: [Ltru] section 4.1.1. on Tagging Encompassed Languages

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 19:28:36 -0700

Hi -

As a technical contributor...

Section 4.1.1 recommendation for using macrolanguage codes 
gives me heartburn, since it is phrased almost as an exception
to the "tag wisely" principle, even it it isn't really.

For example, consider this requirement:
   The more specific encompassed language subtag SHOULD be used to form
   the language tag, although either the macrolanguage's primary
   language subtag or the encompassed language's subtag MAY be used.
   This means, for example, tagging Plains Cree with 'crk' rather than
   'cre' (Cree); and so forth.

Whether the "SHOULD" would be followed (or not) is really no different
from the situation with zh-cmn or ar-arb.

But later in the section, there's one bit that I think is just plain wrong:
   The languages in the
   following table represent cases in which the macrolanguage subtag
   SHOULD be used in preference to the specified encompassed language
   subtag.

This introduces unnecessary ambiguity.  The decision whether the more or
the less precise tag is appropriate will depend on the application domain,
and we shouldn't be second-guessing here.  In the spirit of our recent
discussion, it seems that the cases listed in figure 7 are ones where
the original extlang concept fits well, perhaps arguably better than
in the case of Chinese.

If we permitted kok, kok-knn, ms, ms-zsm, sw, sw-swh, uz, and uz-uzn,
there'd be no need to treat these as exceptional cases at all, since
the choice of the more- or less-specific tag would be a natural
consequence of "tag wisely".

Randy

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