Subject: Re: [Ltru] 639-5 (was RE: ISO 639 language code addition rules...)

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2008 23:04:07 -0600

"Phillips, Addison" <addison at amazon dot com> wrote:

> Instead, I would suggest that we include some more meta-information in 
> specific fields in the registry. For example, we could have a 'Source' 
> field to indicate where a record came from and an Attribute field for 
> derived attributes. Here's what our record collection might contain:
>
> Type: language | extlang | script | region | variant | grandfathered | 
> redundant
> Subtag | Tag: <value>
> Added: <date>
> Deprecated: <date>
> Prefix: <value>
> Suppress-Script: <value>
> Description: <text>
> Source: ISO639-1 | ISO639-2 | ISO639-3 | ISO639-5 | ISO3166-1 | 
> ISO15924 | registration
> Attribute: macrolanguage | collection | ...
> Comments: <text>
>
> Thoughts?

I like the concept of the Attribute field, as it basically matches my 
proposed Scope field.  I presume it might also combine the ISO 639-3 
Scope and Language_Type fields, and might be omitted for "individual 
living," as my proposal suggested, since most language subtags fall into 
those groups.

I'm not overjoyed with the name "Attribute," since other fields such as 
Added, Suppress-Script, etc. are also "attributes" of the subtag. 
However, this is just a wordsmithing detail; the name of the field (as 
usual) doesn't matter unless enough people decide to imbue it with 
meaning.

As for the Source field, I think it would be pointless except for 
3-letter subtags of type Language.  All other subtags can have their 
source determined algorithmically, based on type and length.  And about 
93% of our 3-letter language subtags would come from ISO 639-3.  So 
maybe we could have the field, but only for 3-letter language subtags 
whose source is "ISO639-2" or "ISO639-5", again following the principle 
of not filling the Registry with "default" information when the 
"default" occurs the vast majority of the time.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Arvada, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages  ˆ

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---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2008 23:14:20 -0600

I wrote:

> All other subtags can have their source determined algorithmically, 
> based on type and length.

And in the case of "variant," by whether the first character is a digit 
or not.