Subject: Re: [Ltru] The case against adding 'UK'

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:07:19 -0800

Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft dot com> wrote:

> Kent's proposed changes seem sensible to me.

If we add 'UK' to the Registry, what is the remaining justification for 
keeping Section 3.4, item 14 (D) of draft-4646bis, which states that 
duplicate ISO 3166-1 code elements are not added?

I'm not convinced by Kent's argument that "One may read RFC 1766 as that 
exceptionally reserved region subtags could be used."  RFC 1766 referred 
specifically to "ISO 3166 alpha-2 country codes."  The use of 'UK' in 
language tags was (and is) not out of a belief that exceptionally 
reserved code elements are allowed, but out of a common misconception 
over the correct code element for the United Kingdom.  You see this 
misconception in non-language-tagging contexts as well.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, 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: "Kent Karlsson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:53:13 +0100

> duplicate ISO 3166-1 code elements are not added?

That section is still valid, and should be kept, but does not
apply in this case as "UK" is not a by ISO 3166-1 MA newly
assigned code.

		/kent k

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From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:36:58 -0800

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Doug Ewell

> duplicate ISO 3166-1 code elements are not added?

That section deals with maintenance of the registry. There's no conflict.

> misconception in non-language-tagging contexts as well.

So, there's the issue of communicating that "UK" should not be used. That can be done either in the text of the BCP (current draft) or in the registry (Kent's proposal). We can consider which is more likely to be effective.

But, if there is existing usage of "UK" in language tags, then what's the best way for implementations to handle that? If a user requests "en-UK", is it better to reject/ignore the request because the tag is invalid, or to serve up "en-GB" content? If use of "UK" is rare, then treating tags that include it as invalid may be tolerable in the big scheme of things. I don't know how widely it's used.

Peter