Subject: [Ltru] Reserving subtags

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 18:27:09 -0800

Breaking out the discussion on script vs orthography into a separate thread,
I suggest we make the following additions to the ABNF.

language      = (2*3ALPHA [ extlang ]) ; shortest ISO 639 code
              / 4ALPHA                 ; reserved for future use
              / 5*8ALPHA               ; registered language subtag
              / 2*8alphanum            ; others reserved for future use
extlangs      = *3("-" extlang)         ; sequence of extlangs

extlang       = 3ALPHA                  ; specific ISO 639-3 codes
              / ALPHA 2alphanum         ; others reserved for future use

script        = 4ALPHA                 ; ISO 15924 code
              / ALPHA 3alphanum        ; others are registered scripts
or orthographies

region        = 2ALPHA                 ; ISO 3166 code
              / 3DIGIT                 ; UN M.49 code
              / ALPHA DIGIT            ; others reserved for future use
              / DIGIT 2alphanum        ; others reserved for future use

For the scripts, it is to allow us to register major orthographic
differences that are orthogonal to country boundaries, and much more
important than the variations by country in customary matching. We would put
the same caveats in place for these as for language subtags; one has to
approach the 15924 JAC first.

For the others above, the purpose is to just allow us more flexibility in
the future. A nice feature is that first-letter + length indicates the basic
type of the tag.

Mark
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From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 21:38:37 -0500

> I suggest we make the following additions to the ABNF.

I think this is a good design in principle, but I continue to
register a process objection: the time for changes to the ABNF
has passed.

-- 
John Cowan  [email-masked]  http://ccil.org/~cowan
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves.
        --Murray Gell-Mann

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From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 17:58:53 +0100

Mark Davis wrote:
 
> Breaking out the discussion on script vs orthography into a separate
> thread, I suggest we make the following additions to the ABNF.

NAK.  E.g. 2*8 alphanum matches 2*8ALPHA, what you really wanted is 
probably something containing at least one DIGIT _and_ at least one
ALPHA.  

We (TINW, certainly me) want a syntax where looking at a subtag in
isolation tells you what it is (if you kept the info "at the begin"
vs. "somewhere within a tag").

And we (TINW, certainly me) want the 4646 syntax without substantial
changes.  Regrouping some well-formed / ill-formed grandfathered tags
is one thing, but introducing syntactically new kinds of subtags is
another thing, a major change killing _all_ RFC 4646 applications.

Frank

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From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 11:51:44 -0800

It doesn't kill them at all; they just won't recognize them as well-formed
tags. But they won't recognize any tags that have extlang as valid anyway,
so I don't think this is a practical problem.

Mark

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From: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:39:31 -0800

Mark Davis wrote:
 > It doesn't kill them at all; they just won't recognize them as
 > well-formed tags. But they won't recognize any tags that have
 > extlang as
 > valid anyway, so I don't think this is a practical problem.

Well-formed is much more critical than validity checking. Changing the 
ABNF would break implementations (including at least one of mine) that 
obey the ABNF somewhat strictly.

So I think the ABNF needs to be left alone, even if hindsight would 
normally suggest otherwise.

If we need to co-opt something, we have a couple of places where we can 
do it without hosing the ABNF:

   - extlangs: they don't *have* to consist solely of ISO 639-3 codes. 
In particular, we will have something like 6000 language codes that can 
never be extlangs and these could be registered to have a different, 
non-extlangy meaning. For example, 'fon' could be 'phonetic'.

   - variants: we can reserve a particular variant pattern to occur 
before (or, perhaps easier to support, after) all other variants. For 
example, we could say that all variants that start with 'i' are reserved.

Note: I do NOT particularly like these ideas. For dealing with the 
script problems, we really, really ought to talk to ISO 15924.

Addison

-- 
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.
Chair -- W3C Internationalization Core WG

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.