Subject: [Ltru] Re: Proposal: include new "Language-Type:" field

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 23:30:56 -0700

John Cowan <cowan at ccil dot org> wrote:

> The 4646bis registry should capture the language type information from 
> ISO 639-3.  Each language, including macrolanguages, is labeled in -3 
> as either living, extinct, ancient, historic, or constructed.  These 
> terms are defined precisely at http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/types.asp . 
> Though informative rather than normative, this is very useful to help 
> shrink the large number of languages to a more manageable size.

I support this proposal of John's.  I don't agree that it makes the 
Registry into a "kitchen sink" compendium of irrelevant information --  
it is directly related to tagging.

We have text in Section 4.1 of 4646bis that tells users not to use 
"subtags for language collections," but those are not clearly defined 
anywhere except by reference to ISO 639 (and by a rather puzzling 
passage involving "xxx" and "yyy", which I guess are space-fillers). 
One of the major reasons for having a Registry was so users would not 
have to go back to the ISO standards to find out what to use and what 
not to use.

Likewise, instead of having separate notes about (not) using "und" and 
"mul", it might make sense to include a broad usage note about type 
"special" and then list the specific cases.  Note that by hard-coding 
"und" and "mul" into 4646 and 4646bis, we have missed talking about 
"zxx", which should have similar usage constraints.

Trying to correlate languages to countries or group them into families 
(beyond what the core standard provides) would be examples of adding 
information that isn't needed for tagging.

It would be easy to add these Language-Type fields to the 4645bis 
Registry based on the 639-3 data -- not to say that should be a 
determining factor in whether we do 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: "Kent Karlsson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 10:31:09 +0200

+1.

In addition I would prefer to have "Deprecated: ..." for those of type "Collection",
on the grounds that they are "Collection"s, and indeed the "(Other)" portion in
many (most) of them does not make sense in relation to 639-3.

	/kent k

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Doug Ewell [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 8:31 AM
> To: LTRU Working Group
> Subject: [Ltru] Re: Proposal: include new "Language-Type:" field
> 
>

---

From: "Debbie Garside" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 10:12:35 +0100

+1 

> Sent: 05 October 2006 07:31
> To: LTRU Working Group
> I support this proposal of John's.  I don't agree that it 
> makes the Registry into a "kitchen sink" compendium of 
> irrelevant information -- it is directly related to tagging.
> 
> We have text in Section 4.1 of 4646bis that tells users not 
> to use "subtags for language collections," but those are not 
> clearly defined anywhere except by reference to ISO 639 (and 
> by a rather puzzling passage involving "xxx" and "yyy", which 
> I guess are space-fillers). 
> One of the major reasons for having a Registry was so users 
> would not have to go back to the ISO standards to find out 
> what to use and what not to use.
> 
> Likewise, instead of having separate notes about (not) using 
> "und" and "mul", it might make sense to include a broad usage 
> note about type "special" and then list the specific cases.  
> Note that by hard-coding "und" and "mul" into 4646 and 
> 4646bis, we have missed talking about "zxx", which should 
> have similar usage constraints.
> 
> Trying to correlate languages to countries or group them into 
> families (beyond what the core standard provides) would be 
> examples of adding information that isn't needed for tagging.
> 
> It would be easy to add these Language-Type fields to the 
> 4645bis Registry based on the 639-3 data -- not to say that 
> should be a determining factor in whether we do it.
> 
> --
> Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  
> UTN #14 http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 08:59:59 -0400

Kent Karlsson scripsit:

> In addition I would prefer to have "Deprecated: ..." for those of type
> "Collection", on the grounds that they are "Collection"s, and indeed
> the "(Other)" portion in many (most) of them does not make sense in
> relation to 639-3.

I thought about deprecating them, but if they are to be deprecated,
it is in a sense quite different from the deprecation of 'CS' or 'he'.
It's not that they are obsolete or nonsensical, but that they are vague.

However, sometimes vagueness can't be avoided.  The 639-2 codes came
out of library practice, and sometimes the only thing you know about a
document is that it's in some North American Indian language or other --
your records aren't complete.

On the whole, then, I would rather label them as collections directly,
and then say that using collection subtags is discouraged unless no
better information is available.

As for "(Other)", I hope to see its demise; it only makes sense on the
assumption that 639-2 is a closed collection, which it has not been
up to now.

-- 
John Cowan    [email-masked]    http://ccil.org/~cowan
Rather than making ill-conceived suggestions for improvement based on
uninformed guesses about established conventions in a field of study with
which familiarity is limited, it is sometimes better to stick to merely
observing the usage and listening to the explanations offered, inserting
only questions as needed to fill in gaps in understanding. --Peter Constable

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 09:57:07 -0700

I have proposed to the JAC that we remove "(other)" from any collections
that have them. That is an open issue pending JAC discussion.

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 6:00 AM
To: Kent Karlsson
Cc: 'LTRU Working Group'
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Re: Proposal: include new "Language-Type:" field

-- 
John Cowan    [email-masked]    http://ccil.org/~cowan
Rather than making ill-conceived suggestions for improvement based on
uninformed guesses about established conventions in a field of study
with
which familiarity is limited, it is sometimes better to stick to merely
observing the usage and listening to the explanations offered, inserting
only questions as needed to fill in gaps in understanding. --Peter
Constable