Subject: Re: [Ltru] Confirmation question about registry fields

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:02:15 -0600

Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at nic dot fr> wrote:

>>   Future versions of this document might add additional fields to
>>   the registry; implementations SHOULD ignore fields found in the
>>   registry that are not defined in this document.
>
> While it is not explicit, it may indicate that a "once only" field
> could become a "several occurrences" field later.

Technically true, but in most of the "once only" cases, it would make no 
logical sense to have several occurrences.  A single subtag (or tag) 
could not possibly have more than one Type, Subtag or Tag value, 
Preferred-Value, Suppress-Script, or Scope.  That would be like saying a 
person can have two different heights.

In 4646bis we are changing our previous rule about the permanence of 
deprecation, so that it will become possible to re-add (and presumably 
re-deprecate) a subtag that was once deprecated.  However, since we no 
longer have the goal of being able to trace back through the dates in 
the Registry to see when a tag became valid, it would no longer make any 
sense to keep multiple Added or Deprecated fields in such a record.

As for Macrolanguage, this field is wholly determined by ISO 639-3, so 
it would always be possible in theory for that RA to change their rules 
and assign an individual language to two or more macrolanguages. 
Someone would have to make the case that Language A is not only *derived 
from* two or more languages or families, which is not completely absurd 
(think Ladino), but that it is actually *identified as* both Language B 
and Language C in some contexts, which still retaining its own identity 
in others.  That seems far-fetched, and so the restriction against 
multiple Macrolanguage fields in the Registry seems safe.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Thornton, Colorado, 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

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