Subject: [Ltru] Last call: IANA adaptation of the UN disclaimer

From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 12:53:57 +0200

I suggest that we copy the UN disclaimer and tell the IANA to use the 
following wording in its display and documents:

"The designations employed and the presentation of country or area names, 
languages and scipts in this registy do not imply the expression of any 
opinion whatsoever on the part of the IETF, ICANN and IANA concerning the 
legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, 
or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries, or 
concerning any cultural, political, economical, educational sovereign 
issue. The user of any particular subtag should consult the corresponding 
ISO or UN dataset documentation to determine the exact coverage
of statistics for the country or area entities, of the language or of the 
script in the dataset. Various datasets may or may not include coverage of 
outlying and overseas areas nor a comprehensive approach of the involved 
cultural issues, depending on the type of data and source."

Unless we also know better than UN.
jfc

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---

From: "Addison Phillips" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 09:07:31 -0700

In draft-registry or draft-initial?

If in draft-registry, *where*?

Addison

Addison P. Phillips
Globalization Architect, Quest Software
Chair, W3C Internationalization Core Working Group

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
> Behalf Of Peter Constable
> Sent: 2005?7?15? 7:03
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: [Ltru] Last call: IANA adaptation of the UN disclaimer
> 
> > From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
> On
> > Behalf Of r&d afrac
> 
> 
> The second half of this paragraph, which refers to statistics and
> datasets, is out of context and not applicable. I have no objection to a
> revision of the first half appearing in the registry:
> 
> "The designations employed and the presentation of names of countries or
> regions, languages or scripts in this registy do not imply the
> expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the IETF, ICANN and
> IANA concerning the legal status of any country, territory, region or of
> its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of frontiers or
> boundaries, or concerning any cultural, political, economical,
> educational sovereign issue within any country or region including any
> issues pertaining to the identity or usage of any language or script
> within any country or region."
> 
> 
> 
> Peter Constable
>

---

From: "Peter Constable" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:32:16 -0700

> From: Addison Phillips [mailto:[email-masked]]

> If in draft-registry, *where*?

Sorry, I hadn't looked at the syntax for the registry for a while and
was thinking it was possible to include comments -- indeed, I thought we
were including some comments describing the fields of records, but that
was probably something from before the switch to record jar format.
Hence I was thinking this could be included as introductory comments. I
guess since the syntax for the registry doesn't allow for comments, the
only option would be somewhere in draft-registry. 

In looking for a logical place such text might be included, I find there
there's no place where the registry is introduced; the first reference
(other than TOC or the page header "langtags-registry") is in 2.1: 

"Thus a parser need not have an up-to-date copy (or any copy at all) of
the subtag registry to perform most searching and matching operations."

That seems a bit odd to me. I suggest the following paragraphs be added
at the end of the intro of section 2 (i.e. before the heading for 2.1):

<addition>
The language tag is composed of one or more parts or "subtags". As
described below, subtags available for use in a language tag are
maintained in a registry (the 'subtag registry') that is administered by
the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). 

The designations employed and the presentation of names of countries or
regions, languages or scripts in the subtag registy do not imply the
expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the IETF, ICANN and
IANA concerning the legal status of any country, territory, region or of
its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of frontiers or
boundaries, or concerning any cultural, political, economical,
educational sovereign issue within any country or region including any
issues pertaining to the identity or usage of any language or script
within any country or region.
</addition>

A concomitant change would be made in the first paragraph of section
2.1:

- The language tag is composed of one or more parts or "subtags".  Each
   subtag consists...

+ Each subtag within a language tag consists...

Peter Constable

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 10:52:43 -0700

Minor comment. Should the material in the forward slashes be removed? 
Isn't identification the purpose of the registry?

Text:

... or concerning any cultural, political, economical,
educational sovereign issue within any country or region including any
issues pertaining to the /identity or/ usage of any language or script
within any country or region.

Karen Broome

"Peter Constable" <[email-masked]>
Sent by: [email-masked]
07/15/2005 10:32 AM

        To:     <[email-masked]>
        cc: 

<addition>

Peter Constable

---

From: "Peter Constable" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 11:09:12 -0700

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]

> within any country or region.

I see the potential for confusion. What I had in mind was issues of how
speech communities within a given country prefer to identify themselves.
So, for instance, if we provide subtags for Serbian and Croatian or for
Serbo-Croatian, IANA etc. are not thereby expressing any opinion
regarding how speech communities in any of the Balkan nations are or
should be identified by themselves or by their neighbours. Perhaps:

"... pertaining to the usage of any language or script or to identities
used for speech communities within any country or region."

Is that better?

Peter Constable

---

From: Misha Wolf <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 19:19:34 +0100

Hi Peter,

> "... pertaining to the usage of any language or script or to 
> identities used for speech communities within any country or 
> region."
>
> Is that better?

I'm afraid that I find this incomprehensible :-(

Misha

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---

From: "Peter Constable" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 11:36:58 -0700

I'm OK with your alternate wording, modulo my response to your question
of where this should go, and Karen's comment on "identity".

Peter Constable

> Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 11:30 AM
> To: Peter Constable; [email-masked]
> The purpose and point of this text I agree with, but the form of the
text is not in
> keeping with the terminology or form of the rest of the document. It
is nearly
> incomprehensible.
> 
> How about replacing your second paragraph with:
> 
> <q>The presence, absence or contents of subtags and their associated
fields in the
> registry do not and should not be taken to imply an opinion on the
part of the IETF,
> ICANN and IANA concerning the legal status of any language, script,
country, territory,
> region, or language variation. Nor should they be taken to endorse any
particular
> position regarding the legal status, authority, frontiers, boundaries,
or cultural,
> political, economical, or educational policies of any particular
country or region. This
> includes any issues pertaining to the identity or usage of any
language or script within
> any country or region.</q>
> 
> 
> Addison P. Phillips
> > Sent: 2005?7?15? 10:32

---

From: "Peter Constable" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 14:13:12 -0700

> I'm not sure, now that I think about it, that your proposed location makes sense...

It still strikes me as slightly odd that there's a reference to "the subtag registry" in 2.1 using the definite article "the" (usage of which suggests the audience is assumed to know the intended referent) when no prior mention of "the subtag registry" has been made. On reviewing, that can be remedied with a very small change in 6th paragraph of the introduction:

- "This document specifies a particular identifier mechanism (the language tag) and a registration function for values to be used to form tags."

+ ‎"This document specifies a particular identifier mechanism (the language tag) and a ‎registration function (the subtag registry) for values to be used to form tags."‎

Peter Constable

---

From: "Peter Constable" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 14:51:12 -0700

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
On Behalf Of
> Randy Presuhn

> As a technical contributor, I think there adding this text contributes
no value
> to the document, and could in the longer term be harmful, regardless
of
> its benign intent and content.

I'll gladly defer to your judgment on this.

Peter Constable

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 00:24:59 -0700

Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft dot com> wrote:

> was thinking it was possible to include comments -- indeed, I thought
> we were including some comments describing the fields of records, but
> that was probably something from before the switch to record jar
> format. Hence I was thinking this could be included as introductory
> comments. I guess since the syntax for the registry doesn't allow for
> comments, the only option would be somewhere in draft-registry.

You're right, the old semicolon-delimited and bar-delimited registry
formats did have comments.  Everything appearing on a line after # was a
comment, and there was a rather large comment block at the top of those
old registries explaining what all the fields were for.  It's quite a
bit more self-explanatory now, with the record-jar format.

I would tend to agree that IF this big, defensive-sounding legal
disclaimer is deemed necessary, it should be placed in one of the RFCs
(probably 'registry', not 'initial') and not in the registry itself.

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