Subject: [Ltru] ISO 3166-2 and GA-UK

From: Marion Gunn <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 09:40:23 +0000

Scríobh r&d afrac:
> ...
> The confusion over "GB"/"UK" - for all this time, and still for a
> while - is the same as for langtags...

Exactly! 

That is why the need that LTRU and IETF members support GA-UK.

Irish language communities have every right to be angry with langtag
controllers refusing us the same basic rights happily accorded to Saami
communities (who are similarly spread over various dot FI, dot NO, dot
RU and dot SE email/webtags). 

This should be easy - all it requires is goodwill across ISO members
generally towards NSAI's and BSI's communities of Irish speakers. 

Right now (November 2005) langtag controllers oppose this, offering as
their excuse that GA-UK would require ISO 3166-2 to be updtated, but, by
the same logic,  (with ISO 3166-2 currently being updated right now),
they can support that right now, if they want to.  

It is that simple. In the above, I would especially welcome Harald's support.

To recap (for non-Europeans), "UK of GB & NI" means exactly that and
nothing more is required than to facilitate (via ISO 3166-2) assigning
GA-UK to serve Irish speakers north of the border in my country,
matching GA-IE south of it.

I thank you for your attention in this matter. 
mg
-- 

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

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From: Erkki Kolehmainen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 13:25:04 +0200

Marion,

You are only adding to the confusion with your example. You call FI, NO, 
SE and RU "email/webtags", which role they also have, admittedly. Since, 
however, they are the actual ISO 3166 country codes, the speakers of the 
Sámi communities get no special treatment in this context.

Sincerely, Erkki

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From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 13:46:21 +0100

>That is why the need that LTRU and IETF members support GA-UK.

I testified that datacommunications since their inception used UK and 
why. There is absolutely no reason not to include it in Doug's Draft. 
All the more than Doug has described GB as the "larger island" what 
roughly match the legal definition (but the Isles I quoted) and 
exludes Northern-Ireland which is included in the UK legal 
definition. This only calls for Doug to enter "UK" in his table, as I 
did in mine.

>they can support that right now, if they want to.

This is the Internet, not ISO. The purpose of the RFC 3066 bis is 
flexibility in front of situation the network meet and ISO did not indentify.

>matching GA-IE south of it.

I would suggest you another solution.

NI is deprived from a RFC 3066 bis territory. As a part of 
Anglo/Irish agreements, why not to propose an "all Irish" TLD in 
forming a consortium for ".gle" and asking ICANN to enter it into the 
root. This is exactly what Catalans did and obtained for the Catalan language.

Soon everyone will understand that a language is not defined in 
reference to a computer by "experts", but to who speak it. So what 
counts is the spaces of exchanges an architext is meant to (an 
architext can be multilingual). A language TLD is obviously such a space.

jfc

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From: Jon Hanna <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 15:02:25 +0000

r&d afrac wrote:
> NI is deprived from a RFC 3066 bis territory. As a part of Anglo/Irish 
> agreements, why not to propose an "all Irish" TLD in forming a 
> consortium for ".gle" and asking ICANN to enter it into the root.

NI is Nicaragua.

There already is an all-Irish TLD, which is not that amazing since 
ccTLDs and sovereign states are not one and the same. Border disputes 
tend not to be quite as exciting for one thing, .tp not withstanding.

That this thread has managed to reach such new depths is amazing though.

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From: Keld Jørn Simonsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 14:04:37 +0100

> matching GA-IE south of it.

Why dont you use ga-GB for this purpose? GB is the ISO 3166 code for the
nation in question, including Northern Ireland.

best regards
Keld

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From: "JFC (Jefsey) Morfin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 18:04:37 +0100

At 16:02 07/11/2005, Jon Hanna wrote:
>>forming a consortium for ".gle" and asking ICANN to enter it into the root.
>
>NI is Nicaragua.

John,
I suggest you keep in line with the technical aspect of this thread.

>ccTLDs and sovereign states are not one and the same. Border 
>disputes tend not to be quite as exciting for one thing, .tp not withstanding.

I am afraid you confuse ccTLDs and specialised language TLDs. I know 
this is a confusion where RFC 3066 leads to. But I would be 
interested you indicate the label of that existing "all-Irish TLD", 
so I may clarify this for you.

The TLD I suggest is "all-Irish" (language) not "all-Ireland". If I 
suggest it, it is in relation to the Anglo/Irish agreement Nov. 15th, 
1985 Art.10 (b) "the Conference shall be a framework for the 
promotion of co-operation between the two parts of Ireland concerning 
cross border aspects of economic, social and cultural matters". This 
is very similar to the situation for the Catalan language ICANN accepted.

I am not interested in the political aspect. But for years the UK/GB 
issue is used everywhere as an example to illustrate the complexity 
of the ISO 3166 usage in relation to the Internet. It permits to show 
the confusion between and by users, governments, experts. I fully 
understand that this may irritate the people who are directly 
concerned. But it is far easier to stay aside of the political 
aspects in a case we all know about (even imperfectly) than in a new 
case like the _former_ ".tp" case you quote (even if ".tp" was 
managed on Mark Street, in Dublin). In addition ".tl" is a legitimate 
ISO 3166 change which is different from the GB/UK case. Possibly you 
could quote the ".su" case, but there is no claim of the same territory.

Marion's, your or my confusion whatever they may be, show that the 
situation we reached is unclear. The purpose of the document we 
discuss is to make such a situation clear to an automated process. I 
think we are far from that and we either have to work more on it, or 
to describe it in security/societal considerations.

In illustrating the ".cat" case Doug confused, this point also shows 
a new filtering problem. IMHO most of the people will consider that 
".cat" pages will be "cat-latn" by default. This case has not been considered.

This makes a few points to consider for Randy's tracking system.

>That this thread has managed to reach such new depths is amazing though.

Yes. This is the natural consequence of linking partly orthogonal 
matters such as geography and governments, and to document local 
usages through global "decisions" (I quote the RFC 1766 and RFC 3066). .

I understand that the target is an easier filtering and CLDR 
correspondency. The examples above show this is not always acceptable 
or possible, and that the filtering/correspondency proposed mechanism 
may be inadequate to such situations.

jfc