Subject: [Ltru] Re: ISO 3166 alpha-2 (was ISO 3166-2...)

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 22:56:31 -0800

I am only responding to this because it was directed at me.

r&d afrac <rd at afrac dot org> wrote:

> At 06:12 04/11/2005, Doug Ewell wrote:
>> The use of .uk instead of .gb as a country-code top-level domain
>> (which I assume is what "e-mail/webtag" is supposed to mean) was a
>> notable error.  All other countries that have an ISO 3166-1 code
>> element use it as their ccTLD.  (.com and .org and such are
>> "generic" top-level domains, or gTLDs.)
>
> I documented why/how we made that "error". And that I do not want to
> repeat it with RFC 3066 bis.

Your post and mine crossed in the mail.  I don't wish to belabor this. 
ISO 3166 does not exist to mirror ccTLDs.

> BTW may I ask you how you catalog ".cat". I note that the consensus
> of the WG-ltru has been NOT to consider the DNS as concerned by the
> langtags.

What is ".cat" and how would one be expected to catalog it?  Does it 
have something to do with identifying languages?

The consensus of the WG has been that ccTLDs are one use of ISO 3166-1 
alpha-2 code elements, and language tags are another, and that is the 
only relationship between the two.

> May I ask in which capacity you are commenting decisions by the
> British sovereign Government? This is is the WG-ltru, so I suppose
> your mail is relevant and is an illustration of the world you want us
> to live in under RFC 3066 bis under constraints, managed by an
> unprecise group of experts.

Marion made a set of statements about UK and GB, and an unrelated 
statement about ISO 3166-2, and asked whether we supported a particular 
change to ISO 3166-1.  I replied that I did not, and gave my reasons. 
That is the capacity in which I make my comments, as an individual with 
a right to free speech.

In any case, I don't see what this has to do with the British 
government, since if they had wanted UK badly enough I am sure they 
would have made this desire abundantly known to ISO 3166/MA.

Your accusation that I wish to remake the world in some nefarious way 
and force everyone else to live by my rules is as far out of line as 
ever.  We are talking about a coding system for identifying the language 
of computerized content.  Stop treating it like it's a declaration of 
war.

> Question: is the "only the larger island" meant to exclude the Isles
> of Wight, the Hebridies, the Orkneys, the Shetlands, Rockall, etc.
> and the claim they may still have on Corsica?

Don't ask me.  I'm not the one who keeps insisting that GB stands for 
something other than the entire United Kingdom.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California, USA
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/

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---

From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 16:39:33 +0100

>I am only responding to this because it was directed at me.

Bravo. It seems you grasp the true spirit of a WG.

>Your post and mine crossed in the mail.  I don't wish to belabor 
>this. ISO 3166 does not exist to mirror ccTLDs.

ISO 3166 does not exist to document languages.

>The consensus of the WG has been that ccTLDs are one use of ISO 
>3166-1 alpha-2 code elements, and language tags are another, and 
>that is the only relationship between the two.

I do not want to harp on this answer by the author of the proposed 
IANA language registry. I know you are a Unicode, W3C, ISO expert. 
But this is the IETF. This triggers the RFC 3935 principle of 
competence. This is a serious cause for appeal of your proposed registry.

Since the current WG-ltru debate is over filtering, it shows that 
important Internet (cf. RFC 3935 definition) aspects are not considered.

>Don't ask me.  I'm not the one who keeps insisting that GB stands 
>for something other than the entire United Kingdom.

This also trigger the RFC 3935 principle of competence and of 
responsibility for your registry proposition.
- you published a Draft registry where you releate territories and languages.
- you comment one entry (GB) seeming to exclude the reference to a 
larger territory than many other territories in the registry
- when asked about it you answer "Don't ask me". Who else should I ask?

We cannot expect from you as an author to be an expert in every 
international issue at hand. But we can expect you have a methodology 
to address them.

> > This is is the WG-ltru, so I suppose
>Your accusation that I wish to remake the world in some nefarious 
>way and force everyone else to live by my rules is as far out of 
>line as ever.  We are talking about a coding system for identifying 
>the language of computerized content.  Stop treating it like it's a 
>declaration of war.

Again, you totally invent a position of mine you can oppose.

You are the author of RFC 3066 bis comburent document, I suppose you 
want to see applied and used? Authors of the RFC 3066 bis have 
documented enough they add constraints to RFC 3066 to ensure its 
better use. This use depends on experts you currently embodies as the 
registry authors the point above permits me to qualify as unprecise.

I do not think RFC 3066 bis is nefarious (your term) but uncomplete. 
Imposing a proprietary naming system to language products, solutions 
etc. It will also lead to unprecise and contradictory filtering.

The question is simple: who is most authoritative over what people 
do. The experts who feed their computers or the people themselves? 
This is like parents for their kids. At the begining the experts are. 
Then technology and the people's expertise develops and becomes more 
pertinent. There is a need for a transition.

Transitions are costly and mean (power, control, market, recognition, 
etc.) domain losses. So, some experts want to stay in the lead 
instead of transfering. They progressively lose (RFC 3935) competence 
and responsibility capacity. This is why I think it is upto 
responsible engineers to organise the new technical context for 
experts to assist people, instead of shepherding them.

These reluctant experts may be unaware or nostalgic, I do not judge 
them. They may confuse some merchants for a while (commercial 
interest is _never_ to oppose the market). But they are on the wrong 
track, and the work they do (which unfortunately might be precious) 
might be lost. We saw that all the time, in all the technologies. 
"the customer/user is king" is not a commercial trick, but a long 
time experience.

jfc

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From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 19:37:08 -0800

Hi -

This thread is not contibuting to forward progress.

If you feel the need to post to the ltru mailing list,
please focus on addressing specific comments
on our sole remaining deliverable: the matching draft.
I suspect that Martin will soon issue the WG last call,
so it's time to carefully review the draft.

Randy, ltru co-chair

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From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 13:31:57 +0100

Dear Randy,
I am afraid you miss the issue. Filtering is to permit to get a 
reading compromise between readers having different preferences. 
Therefore to clarify difficult situations. The UK/GB is a typical 
real life case of difficult situation.

For religious reasons the [email-masked] mailing list 
refuses to accept UK as an alias for GB (this would be no problem in 
my proposed approach). For many reasons many programs, routines, etc. 
will use "uk". This creates a typical problem the proposed  Draft 
does not address.

In addition, we discovered that the author of the proposed registry 
is not able to tell if the Isles of Wight, the Hebridies, the 
Orkneys, the Shetlands, Rockall, etc. and Northern-Ireland are or not 
documented at all (what would lead GB to be understood as the "larger 
island", and UK for what rules the Brisith Governement).

The interest of the GB/UK case is that it precisely rises two typical 
examples (two codes for a same name, different coverages for a same 
name) which create real problem to filtering. For example, filtering 
wise, one can assume that GA-UK is closer to GA-IE (as only separated 
by a few meters over the boarder) than to GA-GB which might be some 
Cork family living in London.

All this rises again the question: who is to decide what is good for 
the users: the [email-masked] CLDR experts or the users 
themselves. ditto for filtering.

This is the core of the Draft. And this has not been discussed.
jfc