Subject: [Ltru] Re: non-written content (was: Proposals for changes to latest draft)

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Mar 2007 23:29:26 -0800

Randy Presuhn <randy underscore presuhn at mindspring dot com> wrote:

>> Again, all I'm requesting is stronger language about NOT using script 
>> tags with audio language, such as the edits I suggested previously. I 
>> never said I wanted a generic audio tag.
>
> Your proposal was fine with me.  Others' suggestions to add something 
> like "-audio" bother me.

Thank you for discreetly not mentioning my name.

> Perhaps your comment might be accommodated by way of a "tag wisely" 
> example.  In section 4.1 of the current i-d, we could insert an 
> example after the sentence "Subtags SHOULD only be used where they add 
> useful distinguishing information; extraneous subtags interfere with 
> the meaning, understanding, and processing of language tags." Such an 
> example might be "For example, inclusion of a script subtag would not 
> be helpful in characterizing purely audio data."

That's not enough; what she is asking for is a MUST NOT, and I 
understand that, because inclusion of a script subtag for purely audio 
data would not be merely unhelpful, it would be absolutely 
inappropriate.

--
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 

_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 09:40:12 -0800

I strongly disagree.

1. We, and I'm sure others, have the need to tag three kinds of information.

   1. Any English (written or non-written)
   2. Written English
   3. Non-Written English

Simply because you, Doug, don't see a need for this in your environment
doesn't mean that others don't have a legitimate need.

\We can express that with the following:

#1 is handled with "en"
#2 is handled with "en-Latn" (or other scripts for other languages)
#3 is handled with "en-Zxxx" (the code for unwritten languages) or "en-Qabx"

2. Now, I bowed to Doug's desire not to use Zxxx in the text, although
frankly there is no good reason for it. Some have said that Zxxx only
applies to cases where the language is never written. But there is no
implication of that in the text of 15924.

When we are using any codes to mark content, it is the specific instance
that is at issue, whether it is in Latn or Arab, not some metaphysical
determination of whether the language could be written in Latn or Arab. The
application of a script tag to content is not an application to the language
itself, it is an application to the particular instance of content being
tagged. If I legitimately tag content "abc-Zxxx" for an instance of a
language Abc which is not written, it would be bizarre that because someone
invents an orthography for Abc in 10 years that my tag somehow then becomes
illegitimate.

I don't see any reason to not apply Zxxx to language content that is not
written. It satisfies a legitimate requirement, and does so within the
structure of BCP 47.

Mark

-- 
Mark

---

From: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 09:59:55 -0800

> data would not be merely unhelpful, it would be absolutely inappropriate.
> 

MUST NOT is not appropriate there. We don't prevent people from tagging 
content "stupidly" and it introduces an untestable burden on software 
and users. For example, a text-to-speech application might very well 
generate some audio content and tag it with the language tag associated 
with the original text. Voila: "Traditional Chinese" audio content.

"zh-Hant-CN" is no more silly than "tlh-AQ" on audio content. In fact, 
it probably still conveys some useful facts about the content. I agree 
with providing "tag wisely" and strong warnings (SHOULD/SHOULD NOT), but 
not with going overboard.

Addison

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

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 18:49:01 -0800

I agree with Doug's previous e-mail on the subject and disagree with 
Addison's interpretation. Script tags are NOT appropriate for audio 
content. If assistive technology is used (such as text-to-speech), two 
forms of the language are used -- one form is converted to the other and 
they are not the same. If someone requested tagging for both the "input" 
and "output" forms of the language, I would use one code for the input 
language and one code for the output language. Consider if the conversion 
is from Traditional Chinese to Simplified Chinese. What is the proper 
language tag then? This is a real use case. There are also applications 
that convert one text language to another -- what is the language then?

By Addison's argument we could have Traditional Chinese Braille, and I'm 
sure we don't want  to amend the text to allow double script tags, do we? 
It doesn't make sense.This text is useful to anyone tagging audio content. 
>From my experience, this provision is not always obvious. As such, I don't 
think "tag wisely" is strong enough language.

Doug's e-mail accurately reflects my opinion on this issue. Please 
reconsider my request for this text addition.

Regards,

Karen Broome
Metadata Systems Designer
Sony Pictures Entertainment
310.244.4384

Addison Phillips <[email-masked]> 
03/05/2007 09:59 AM

To
Doug Ewell <[email-masked]>
cc
LTRU Working Group <[email-masked]>
Subject
Re: [Ltru] Re: non-written content (was: Proposals for changes to latest 
draft)

inappropriate.

Addison

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 23:02:15 -0500

> sure we don't want  to amend the text to allow double script tags, do we? 

No.  Braille is Brai, and the type of Braille would have to be represented
in a variant tag if it could not be recovered from the language and
country subtags:  e.g. ustype1 and ustype2.

-- 
What asininity could I have uttered     John Cowan <[email-masked]>
that they applaud me thus?              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        --Phocion, Greek orator

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 20:17:47 -0800

It seems you are agreeing with me, John.

Addison's argument  was that when Traditional Chinese is run through a 
text-to-speech application, it becomes "audio Traditional Chinese." I 
strongly disagree. 

If Addison's argument is extended from text-to-speech applications to 
text-to-Braille applications, then following his logic, the Braille output 
would be Traditional Chinese too, leading to the necessity for two script 
tags and that does not make sense to me. When a language is run through 
any kind of converter, it is transformed and so there is a "before" and an 
"after" language. 

Audio languages are not written in scripts and I don't think "audio" 
Traditional Chinese makes any sense. 

With all due respect,

Karen Broome

John Cowan <[email-masked]> 
03/05/2007 08:02 PM

To
[email-masked]
cc
Doug Ewell <[email-masked]>, LTRU Working Group <[email-masked]>
Subject
Re: [Ltru] Re: non-written content (was: Proposals for changes  to latest 
draft)

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 23:24:56 -0500

> Traditional Chinese makes any sense. 

I agree.

I also think that realistically you will have two different metadata
elements, one for audio and one for text content, so that the ambiguity
of "en" (spoken or written) will be harmless.

-- 
John Cowan  [email-masked]  http://ccil.org/~cowan
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders.
        --Hal Abelson

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 23:27:09 -0500

>   1. Any English (written or non-written)

Can you show me a use case where these are contrastive?  Movies have
audio and (sometimes) text, but this will be most naturally expressed
in two distinct metadata properties.  Most other formats have only one
piece of language metadata, though its values may vary at different
points within the document/object.

-- 
Not to perambulate                 John Cowan <[email-masked]>
    the corridors                  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
during the hours of repose
    in the boots of ascension.       --Sign in Austrian ski-resort hotel

---

From: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 20:45:01 -0800

I'm not saying I think there is such as thing as "audio Traditional 
Chinese". What I'm saying is: trying to prevent software from making 
obvious (if wrong) choices is not realistic. "Audio Traditional Chinese" 
is silly... but entirely possible, no?

TTS engines aren't always in the position of knowing how to modify a 
language tag. They are not people, after all. And what I'm pointing out 
is not the ideal design, but rather a "likely enough" scenario.

In any case, my point is that using "MUST NOT" with script subtags for 
audio content doesn't necessarily act as a remedy for the problme, any 
more than we can offer for many other dubious choices one could make 
with language tags. I am cautious about introducing normative language, 
especially where it pertains to tag choices.

In particular, tag choice is (will we, nill we) something that normative 
language cannot adequately control. We should use strong language to 
oppose silly tags. But we should also permit implementations the 
latitude to deal with silliness. Normative language applied 
overweeningly will simply be ignored. That is worse than the alternative.

Addison

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 22:37:05 -0800

So is it your belief that the draft is satisfactory as-is?

Frankly, I don't think "tag wisely" says anything at all. "Wise" is not 
defined and is subject to interpretation. I'd settle for a SHOULD NOT, but 
I am not satisfied with the draft as-is and there is a lot of confusion 
about this in my industry where audio and and text languages must be 
distinguished. So yes, you will find two properties -- one for audio 
language and one for text language, but more often than not, the list used 
for user clasFrom [email-masked] Tue Mar 06 01:39:04 2007
To: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Re: non-written content (was: Proposals for	changes	to
	latest draft)
From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 22:37:05 -0800
Cc: Doug Ewell <[email-masked]>, LTRU Working Group <[email-masked]>

This is a multipart message in MIME format.

So is it your belief that the draft is satisfactory as-is?

Frankly, I don't think "tag wisely" says anything at all. "Wise" is not 
defined and is subject to interpretation. I'd settle for a SHOULD NOT, but 
I am not satisfied with the draft as-is and there is a lot of confusion 
about this in my industry where audio and and text languages must be 
distinguished. So yes, you will find two properties -- one for audio 
language and one for text language, but more often than not, the list used 
for user classification will be the same for both categories and this 
results in junk data. There is an increasing amount of audio content on 
the web, so it's not just a problem for film and television.

I realize that text labels that appear in a drop-down are different from 
code tags, but of course, these choices ultimately end up as BCP 47 tags 
in XML formats that are increasingly used in my industry. 

Karen Broome

03/05/2007 08:45 PM

To
[email-masked]
cc
John Cowan <[email-masked]>, Doug Ewell <[email-masked]>, LTRU 
Working Group <[email-masked]>
Subject
Re: [Ltru] Re: non-written content (was: Proposals for  changes to latest 
draft)

Addison

---

From: [email-masked]

&nbsp; &nbsp;to latest draft)</font></table>
<br>
<table>
<tr valign=top>
<td>
<td></table>
<br></table>
<br>
<br>
<br><tt><font size=2>I'm not saying I think there is such as thing as &quot;audio
Traditional <br>
Chinese&quot;. What I'm saying is: trying to prevent software from making
<br>
obvious (if wrong) choices is not realistic. &quot;Audio Traditional Chinese&quot;
<br>
is silly... but entirely possible, no?<br>
<br>
TTS engines aren't always in the position of knowing how to modify a <br>
language tag. They are not people, after all. And what I'm pointing out
<br>
is not the ideal design, but rather a &quot;likely enough&quot; scenario.<br>
<br>
In any case, my point is that using &quot;MUST NOT&quot; with script subtags
for <br>
audio content doesn't necessarily act as a remedy for the problme, any
<br>
more than we can offer for many other dubious choices one could make <br>
with language tags. I am cautious about introducing normative language,
<br>
especially where it pertains to tag choices.<br>
<br>
In particular, tag choice is (will we, nill we) something that normative
<br>
language cannot adequately control. We should use strong language to <br>
oppose silly tags. But we should also permit implementations the <br>
latitude to deal with silliness. Normative language applied <br>
overweeningly will simply be ignored. That is worse than the alternative.<br>
<br>
Addison<br>
<br>
-- <br>
Addison Phillips<br>
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.<br>
Chair -- W3C Internationalization Core WG<br>
<br>
Internationalization is an architecture.<br>
It is not a feature.<br>
<br>
<br>
</font></tt>
<br>
--=_alternative 0022513D88257296_=--

--===============0306167789==
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

--===============0306167789==--

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 22:37:04 -0800

Or, I suppose, Addison's argument would indicate that the converted 
Braille "text" wasn't Braille at all, but Traditional Chinese. 

03/05/2007 08:17 PM

To

With all due respect, 

Karen Broome

To
[email-masked] 
cc
Doug Ewell <[email-masked]>, LTRU Working Group <[email-masked]> 
Subject
Re: [Ltru] Re: non-written content (was: Proposals for changes        to   
  latest draft)

Or, I suppose, Addison's argument would indicate that the converted 
Braille "text" wasn't Braille at all, but Traditional Chinese. 

03/05/2007 08:17 PM

To

With all due respect, 

Karen Broome

To
[email-masked] 
cc
Doug Ewell <[email-masked]>, LTRU Working Group <[email-masked]> 
Subject
Re: [Ltru] Re: non-written content (was: Proposals for changes        to   
  latest draft)

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 22:43:57 -0800

I agree that tagging audio content for script is inappropriate and strongly to be discouraged; but I also agree with Addison that we should not impose a difficult implementation constraint to guarantee that such bad subtag combinations absolutely never occur -- which is what MUST NOT would entail.

It's really on a par with tagging French content as "de" -- the tag itself is an acceptable tag, but it would be completely inappropriate used in that context. If an author makes that choice, that's not a problem of any software that processes the tag. If some automated language detection software makes the choice, there's a problem with that software, but it's still not a problem with the software processing the tag. Similarly, "zh-Hant" is an acceptable tag, but if an author or some process detecting the format of the content makes an error, that doesn't mean that the software processing the tag itself has been implemented in a non-conformant manner.

IMO, conformance should be about proper construction and interpretation of tags, not about guaranteeing that the choice of tag applied to content is always the most appropriate.

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Addison Phillips [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 8:45 PM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: Doug Ewell; LTRU Working Group
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Re: non-written content (was: Proposals for changes to latest draft)

Addison

---

From: GerardM <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 08:42:17 +0100

Hoi,
When you have audio of Chinese, it is so ambiguous it is next to
meaningless. The point of Chinese is that it is written the same way for
many languages. Audio Chinese removes the one binding aspect of all these
languages.
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 3/6/07, [email-masked] <[email-masked]> wrote:
> tags and that does not make sense to me. When a language is run through any
> kind of converter, it is transformed and so there is a "before" and an
> "after" language.
>
>  *John Cowan <[email-masked]>*
>
> 03/05/2007 08:02 PM
>   To
> [email-masked]  cc
> that they applaud me thus?              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan<http://www.ccil.org/%7Ecowan>
>        --Phocion, Greek orator
>

---

From: Ted Hardie <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 00:03:57 -0800

At 8:42 AM +0100 3/6/07, GerardM wrote:
>Hoi,
>When you have audio of Chinese, it is so ambiguous it is next to meaningless. The point of Chinese is that it is written the same way for many languages. Audio Chinese removes the one binding aspect of all these languages.
>Thanks,
>    GerardM

I do not understand this statement at all.  Spoken Chinese is not ambiguous
for the community of speakers, and tagging may help indicate which community
of speakers is associated with a resource.    Are you saying that in the absence
of other tags, the range of potential language communities is too varied for
"Chinese" to be useful?
				Ted

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 00:20:33 -0800

Movies are an obvious case of constrastive usage. While you might find it
"most naturally expressed in two distinct metadata properties", we don't.

We are making over 8,000 distinctions among primary language subtags; I
simply don't understand why you are so against having a subtag to
distinguish uses of language that are not written. I accept that some people
may have a legitimate need to distinguish Copainalá Zoque from Chimalapa
Zoque with language tags; what is so difficult about realizing that some
people may have a legitimate need to distinguish written from non-written,
say, English with language tags?

Mark

---

From: GerardM <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 09:22:53 +0100

Hoi,
yes.
Thanks,
    GerardM

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 11:27:25 -0500

> "most naturally expressed in two distinct metadata properties", we don't.

What 4646-compliant tag expresses the case "Spoken language in American
English with subtitles in French, German, or Japanese"?  You *have* to
have separate entries for the spoken language of a film and the language
of subtitling.

> [W]hat is so difficult about realizing that some people may have a
> legitimate need to distinguish written from non-written, say, English
> with language tags?

*Saying* "there's a need" is not a magic formula.  We need to know what
the need actually is.

-- 
One Word to write them all,             John Cowan <[email-masked]>
  One Access to find them,              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
One Excel to count them all,
  And thus to Windows bind them.                --Mike Champion

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2007 17:30:39 +0100

Peter Constable wrote:

> IMO, conformance should be about proper construction and interpretation of
> tags, not about guaranteeing that the choice of tag applied to content is
> always the most appropriate.

+1

IIRC we already have a SHOULD NOT.  Violating a SHOULD NOT needs a good
excuse, and stupidity of the tagger isn't a good excuse.  But there might
be odd cases where using a script subtag with audio content makes sense:

A German phrase is "Fraktur reden", so maybe somebody tries de-Latf.  IMO
still stupid, but nothing serious should break (as it is required for a
MUST NOT).

There are script subtags like Sgnw, Visp, Zxxx, Zyyy, and Zzzz, and maybe
there could be situations (= good excuses) where using these subtags with
audio content is not plain nonsense.

And if there's no good excuse at all the SHOULD NOT has almost the same
effect as a MUST NOT.  The only remaining difference would be that an
implementation isn't allowed to crash if it finds a stupid script, with
a MUST NOT it could crash.  Who needs this ?

Frank

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 13:05:16 -0800

No 4646 code expresses any multiple usages; they are single codes. That is
orthogonal to whether entries are separated or not. The set {en-Zxxx; fr;
de; ja} represents the content you indicate, without resorting other
structural requirements. We also added Sign languages, without requiring
that those be separated out into separate metadata streams.

As to the need, well, I think it's pretty obvious. I realize that if you are
working in a text-only world you may not see that need; I personally may not
see the need for adding 6,000 language codes to the registry, but am willing
to trust that reasonable people have legitimate needs for those codes. Do we
really want to go through each and every code and have someone justify a
need for each one?

Mark

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 14:15:24 -0500

Mark Davis scripsit:

> As to the need, well, I think it's pretty obvious. I realize that
> if you are working in a text-only world you may not see that need;
> I personally may not see the need for adding 6,000 language codes to
> the registry, but am willing to trust that reasonable people have
> legitimate needs for those codes.  Do we really want to go through
> each and every code and have someone justify a need for each one?

I think I see.  What you want is a tag that means "No script",
as 'zxx' means "No language" and '001' means "No region" (worldwide).
I didn't understand that before.

In that case I think 'Zxxx' serves the purpose.
Doug, can you restate the case against it (other than "Michael
says we don't, we don't")?

-- 
Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies!    John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,     http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 13:31:43 -0800

Exactly. Sorry I couldn't explain it better beforehand.

Mark

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 22:51:45 -0800

John Cowan <cowan at ccil dot org> wrote:

> I think I see.  What you want is a tag that means "No script", as 
> 'zxx' means "No language" and '001' means "No region" (worldwide). I 
> didn't understand that before.
>
> In that case I think 'Zxxx' serves the purpose. Doug, can you restate 
> the case against it (other than "Michael says we don't, we don't")?

For me at least, it has nothing to do with obedient agreement with 
Michael.  The ISO 15924 table, from which we took the description of 
"Zxxx" in the Registry, says "Code for unwritten languages," which I 
consider fundamentally different from "Code for unwritten content." 
Earlier I used the examples of Svan and Lobedu as examples of truly 
unwritten languages; they have no commonly accepted written form. 
Perhaps these languages were poor or hard-to-visualize examples since 
they don't appear in ISO 639-* or the draft Registry.

I admit I don't know what the practical value of "Code for unwritten 
languages" would be in a script encoding standard, but it may be 
perfectly obvious to someone else whose application of ISO 15924 differs 
from ours.

In any case, I came to the conclusion on my own that "unwritten 
language" and "unwritten content" were not the same, and only then did I 
contact Michael and find that his interpretation was the same.  And as 
it turns out, I don't seem to be representing the consensus view on much 
of anything lately, here or on ietf-languages, so I won't be surprised 
if the group decides to use "Zxxx" for this purpose.

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 23:03:57 -0800

Strictly speaking, your concern seems valid, given the documented semantic.

But I'm completely baffled at how the semantic "unwritten languages" is coherent in the context of ISO 15924 and also consistent with the way it is being maintained: it's supposed to be a coding for scripts. It's not a coding of languages. It isn't even a coding of some set of attributes of languages. If it were a coding for writing-related attributes of languages, then it would *clearly* be in scope to code written-form variants in ISO 15924.

On the other hand, the semantic "non-written content" *would* be coherent and consistent for ISO 15924.

Peter

---

From: Marion Gunn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 12:17:01 +0000

I rather think that is sidestepping (failing to resolve) Sony's  
problem, which started this thread re tagging audio content in a  
language not discernible to the tagger (if I recall correctly,  
pending confirmation from Karen).

On 8 Mar 2007, at 06:51, scríobh Doug Ewell:

> ...The ISO 15924 table, from which we took the description of  
> "Zxxx" in the Registry, says "Code for unwritten languages," which  
> I consider fundamentally different from "Code for unwritten content."

Me, too. Fundamentally.

> as it turns out, I don't seem to be representing the consensus view  
> on much of anything lately, here or on ietf-languages, so I won't  
> be surprised if the group decides to use "Zxxx" for this purpose.

Ditto.

mg

- -
Marion Gunn * EGTeo (Estab.1991)
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn, Baile an
Bhóthair, Co. Átha Cliath, Éire.
* [email-masked] * [email-masked] *

---

From: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 07:36:56 -0800

Marion Gunn wrote:
> I rather think that is sidestepping (failing to resolve) Sony's problem, 
> which started this thread re tagging audio content in a language not 
> discernible to the tagger (if I recall correctly, pending confirmation 
> from Karen).

In my opinion, we directly address Karen's concerns with textual changes 
in my current set of edits. These incorporated quite clear statements 
about the use of script subtags with audio content, including:

--
Script subtags are never appropriate for unwritten content (such as 
audio recordings).
--

and (in an example, hence the non-RFC 2119 use of "should not"):

--
# When labeling content that is unwritten (such as a recording of human 
speech), the script subtag should not be used, even if the language is 
customarily written in several scripts. Thus the subtitles to a movie 
might use the tag "zh-cmn-Hant" (Chinese, Mandarin, Traditional script), 
but the audio track for the same language would be tagged "zh-cmn".
--

Mark's suggestions for the use (or co-opting, depending on how one sees 
it) of 'Zxxx' would serve a different purpose, for which I proposed text 
last night. I'm curious if the *idea* of such a subtag makes sense to 
you and others on the list. The actual subtag used for that purpose is a 
separate matter.

Addison

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 08:07:10 -0800

> you and others on the list. The actual subtag used for that purpose is a

In most scenarios, it should not be necessary to explicitly declare that content is audio within a language tag. But I have no problem allowing for use of a subtag to make the explicit declaration within a language tag in particular applications.

We should get the ISO 15924  RA to explain how the current semantic of Zxxx "non-written language" makes sense in the context of that standard. If they have a reasonable rationale, then we should ask for a new script ID, e.g. Zyyy, to mean "non-written content". If they don't have a reasonable rationale, we can suggest that the semantic of Zxxx should be adjusted to "non-written content".

Either way, we should come to mutual agreement with the ISO 15924 RA on an ID for "non-written content", and should *not* make arbitrary revisions to the denotation of IDs in that -- or any -- standard to fit our purposes.

If the RA's reviewer objects to creating an ID for "non-written content", then we should submit a complaint to the RA and the RA Joint Advisory Committee. If they object, we should submit a complaint to ISO CS. But I would hope those contingencies remain nothing but that.

Peter

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 11:20:12 -0500

> you and others on the list. The actual subtag used for that purpose is a 

It definitely makes sense to me.  I think we should call it out specially,
along with its counterparts 'zxx' and '001', as things useful in certain
contexts, but which might otherwise be overlooked.  4.1, where 'und'
and 'mul' are explained, is probably the right place.

-- 
"Well, I'm back."  --Sam        John Cowan <[email-masked]>

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 08:20:12 -0800

I am as well; I just don't see the the "never written languages"
interpretation is at all coherent.

Mark

On 3/7/07, Peter Constable <[email-masked]> wrote:
> But I'm completely baffled at how the semantic "unwritten languages" is
> coherent in the context of ISO 15924 and also consistent with the way it is
> being maintained: it's supposed to be a coding for scripts. It's not a
> coding of languages. It isn't even a coding of some set of attributes of
> languages. If it were a coding for writing-related attributes of languages,
> then it would *clearly* be in scope to code written-form variants in ISO
> 15924.
>

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 17:41:14 +0100

Addison Phillips wrote:

> I'm curious if the *idea* of such a subtag makes sense to
> you and others on the list. The actual subtag used for that
> purpose is a separate matter.

Not much, and Doug's argument against Zxxx is compelling.

You mentioned some text using "never appropriate" for the
opposite case (any script subtag for non-written content).

I'd prefer a SHOULD NOT, because Karen said it's harmful. 

BTW, a logical consequence is that abusing Zxxx for other
purposes violates this SHOULD NOT.  Actually the complete
subtag vilates this SHOULD NOT, therefore you've to mention
it as exception.  Proposed text:

- Script subtags are never appropriate for unwritten content
- (such as audio recordings).
+ Most script subtags are never appropriate and SHOULD NOT
+ be used for unwritten content (such as audio recordings),
+ with the possible exception of subtags like Zxxx (a code
+ for unwritten languages).

I've not yet read your editor's copy, maybe you have this
SHOULD NOT already elsewhere.
 
Frank

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 23:43:29 -0800

All,

The edits Addison details below completely resolve my concerns and are 
exactly what I requested. I have no personal interest in the unwritten 
content tag at present, though I am not opposed to it if someone else has 
some use for it.

Thank you, Addison.

Karen Broome

03/08/2007 07:36 AM

To
Marion Gunn <[email-masked]>
cc
LTRU Working Group <[email-masked]>
Subject
Re: [Ltru] Re: non-written content

Addison