Subject: [Ltru] Preparing ourselves for IETF Last Call

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:44:36 -0800

(Apologies in advance if this message serves as troll food, but I 
believe it's important in conducting and focusing the business of this 
WG.)

Assuming that we can come to a decision on how to support extlangs-- or 
more likely, how to modify 4647 *instead of* supporting extlangs -- we 
will eventually find ourselves submitting two (or three) new drafts for 
IETF Last Call.

IETF Last Call isn't just a formality, as many LTRU members know.  There 
are lots of people in the IETF, not only the Gen-ART reviewer but 
others, who will likely take a look at our charter and at our 
deliverables, and who may ask some tough questions when those two don't 
seem to match.

The change to Section 2.2.4 to add seven ISO 3166 exceptionally reserved 
code elements to the Registry ("FX" is already there) may be one of 
those issues that raises eyebrows.  Adding more region subtags is not 
mentioned anywhere in our charter, and people may wonder how this change 
got there, especially with such rapidity (eight days from mention of 
"QU" by Philippe Verdy on the Unicode list to submission of draft-09 
allowing "EU" and others).  I think we may want to prepare ourselves for 
the type of questioning we are likely to see from the IETF during Last 
Call:

Q:  Why the change to add exceptionally reserved country codes?

A:  We wanted to permit access within language tags to regions that
    have no officially assigned ISO 3166 code element.

Q:  Many of these are small, sparsely inhabited islands or areas that
    don't show a distinct linguistic identity.  What's the motivation
    for adding them?

A:  OK, we really just wanted to add "EU" for "European Union," and
    adding the others prevents us from being accused of cherry-picking.
    We didn't want to claim to know the needs of tagging applications
    better than the users of those applications.

Q:  Isn't it cherry-picking to exclude "UK"?

A:  Yes, but in a good way.  "UK" is a duplicate of "GB".

Q:  Some rogue tagging applications currently use "UK" instead of "GB".
    Do you know those applications' needs better than their users?

A:  Yes; that's not "best current practice" in the way that "EU" would
    be.

Q.  What distinct language variety is associated with the EU to justify
    this change to the BCP?

A:  Possible official bureaucratic terminology promulgated by EU
    leadership; other as-yet unknown language variations.

Q:  Does BCP 47 normally represent bureaucratic terminology or unknown
    variations by adding region subtags?

A:  No, but the EU is different.

Q:  Don't the existing numeric region subtags for Europe, Western
    Europe, etc. adequately cover European language usage, without the
    inherent tag instability caused by changes to EU membership?

A:  OK, this isn't just about language tagging after all.  We really
    want the LSR to be not only the source of language tags, but *the*
    reference for stabilized, maintainable codes for languages,
    scripts, and regions.

Q:  I thought that's what the ISO standards were for.

A:  We're more stable and traceable than they are.

Q:  That's a non-trivial change of scope.  Is this in the LTRU's
    charter?

A:  The charter does say that the WG can "make adjustments to the
    registration process and the form of the registry if this is deemed
    appropriate based on ongoing registration and operational
    experience."  Operational experience shows that projects like CLDR,
    ICU, Java, etc. already use the LSR as their reference instead of
    ISO standards.

Q:  How are you guys doing on adding support for ISO 639-3 code
    elements?  That was the main purpose for rechartering the WG.  The
    charter page says you were going to be ready with IETF LC drafts
    back in January 2007, assuming that ISO 639-3 was approved.

A:  We still don't have that worked out yet.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://home.roadrunner.com/~dewell
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages  ˆ

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

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:23:15 -0800

> From: Doug Ewell [mailto:[email-masked]]

> A:  Yes, but in a good way.  "UK" is a duplicate of "GB".

I'll say it yet again: excluding "UK" is consistent with section 3.4; to wit:

  "8.   Codes assigned by ISO 639, ISO 15924, and ISO 3166 that do not
        conflict with existing subtags of the associated type and whose
        meaning is **not the same as an existing subtag of the same type**
        are entered into the IANA registry as new records."

(Emphasis added.)

Peter

---

From: "Kent Karlsson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2007 23:19:33 +0100

>         are entered into the IANA registry as new records."

It seems that would not preclude including it (UK) as a deprecated
subtag with a preferred value (GB). Compare other such subtags, e.g. iw.

	/kent k

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 08:56:17 -0800

> From: Kent Karlsson [mailto:[email-masked]]

> subtag with a preferred value (GB). Compare other such subtags, e.g. iw.

But is also doesn't preclude us *not* including it, and is indicative of a principled rather than ad hoc basis for not including it.

Peter

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:53:25 +0900

As a technical contributor, I think there is a big difference between
the 'IW' case, which was changed upstreams, a long time ago, and 'UK',
which would be dead on arrival.

Regards,   Martin.

>subtag with a preferred value (GB). Compare other such subtags, e.g. iw.

#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:43:20 +0100

Doug Ewell wrote:

[about Last Call]
The draft is in an unacceptable state, not limited to the 
fantasy islands codes.  There are also biannual expert
reviewer appointments by the IESG, undefined and 
unjustified Latin transliterations, generic variants still
allowed, dubious registered languages,  the extlang
situation is unclear, etc. (without actually looking into
the draft, likely this enumeraton isn't complete).

 Frank

---

From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 07:57:39 +0100

Martin Duerst wrote:

> I think there is a big difference between the 'IW' case,
> which was changed upstreams, a long time ago, and 'UK',

Quite the contrary, UK is the only addition that would
remotely make sense, folks confuse it anyway with GB due
to the ccTLD and POSIX locale, Marion really wanted it.

The other wannabe-additions are DOA, some are dangerous,
e.g. DG, EA, and IC.  And EU is incompatible with any 
sense of stability, apart from being useless for language
tagging.

 Frank

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:53:25 +0900

Regards,   Martin.

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:53:25 +0900

Regards,   Martin.

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:53:25 +0900

Regards,   Martin.

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:53:25 +0900

Regards,   Martin.

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:53:25 +0900

Regards,   Martin.

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:11:30 +0900

Hello Doug,

[chair hat on]
The style of your question-and-answer list below may suggest, at least
to some that you don't agree with adding EU and 'friends'. If you indeed
do, please say so clearly.

As a technical contributor, I'm completely fine with adding 'EU' and
friends, it makes sure we don't need another update to our work in the
case 'EU' is really needed. As a chair, I also think that this change
is within our current charter, unless that charter is read extremely
narrowly.

However, as a chair, I also want to make sure that we actually have
(rough) consensus on the things we do to our drafts. So if you (or
anybody else) disagrees with the change that adds 'EU' and friends,
please say so clearly. (Note: This is about what we as a WG think
is the right thing to do. If we as a WG, after discussing the issues,
have reached a (rough) consensus, then I don't think bringing up an
issue again at IETF last call will affect our drafts too much.

Regards,    Martin.

At 04:44 07/11/23, Doug Ewell wrote:
>(Apologies in advance if this message serves as troll food, but I believe it's important in conducting and focusing the business of this WG.)
>
>Assuming that we can come to a decision on how to support extlangs-- or more likely, how to modify 4647 *instead of* supporting extlangs -- we will eventually find ourselves submitting two (or three) new drafts for IETF Last Call.
>
>IETF Last Call isn't just a formality, as many LTRU members know.  There are lots of people in the IETF, not only the Gen-ART reviewer but others, who will likely take a look at our charter and at our deliverables, and who may ask some tough questions when those two don't seem to match.
>
>The change to Section 2.2.4 to add seven ISO 3166 exceptionally reserved code elements to the Registry ("FX" is already there) may be one of those issues that raises eyebrows.  Adding more region subtags is not mentioned anywhere in our charter, and people may wonder how this change got there, especially with such rapidity (eight days from mention of "QU" by Philippe Verdy on the Unicode list to submission of draft-09 allowing "EU" and others).  I think we may want to prepare ourselves for the type of questioning we are likely to see from the IETF during Last Call:
>
>
>http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages 〓
>
>
>

---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:12:41 -0800

Martin Duerst <duerst at it dot aoyama dot ac dot jp> wrote:

> to some that you don't agree with adding EU and 'friends'. If you 
> indeed do, please say so clearly.

It's well known that I don't agree with adding EU.  I've said so many 
times; for examples, see:

http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ltru/current/msg08786.html

from the current debate, and:

http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/ietf-languages/2006-January/003846.html

from the first time this was brought up.

To restate: EU represents not a country or dependency or protectorate, 
but a constantly-growing (hence unstable from a tagging standpoint) 
collection of countries that exhibit considerable national linguistic 
variation, wholly unrelated to their membership in the EU.  The claim 
that an "official EU bureaucratese" may need to be tagged in the future 
does not indicate a need for us to change the rules to add a special 
geographical region subtag; it is exactly the kind of thing for which 
variant subtags were invented.

If EU were already assigned in ISO 3166, I would have no objection to 
putting it in the LSR like any other ISO 3166 code element.  That would 
be following the normal rules.  But to change our rules for the purpose 
of admitting EU implies a compelling need for EU *in language tags*, and 
that need is not demonstrated IMHO.  I still believe that the purpose of 
the LSR is to specify the components that can be used in *language 
tags*, not for every other purpose for which a stabilized profile of ISO 
standards is required.

The only problem I have with the "friends," which at least identify 
stable and well-defined geographic areas, is that they are also not ISO 
3166 assigned code elements, and adding the exceptionally reserved ones 
potentially opens the door for other types of "reserved" code elements. 
What about AP for the African Regional Industrial Property Organization, 
or WO for the World Intellectual Property Organization?  They're sure to 
have some specialized bureaucratic jargon too.  If we don't limit the 
LSR to officially assigned ISO codes, why should we stop at the 
exceptionally reserved ones?

> friends,

And so is everyone else apparently, except Frank, and so I don't intend 
to try to stop progress on the drafts over this issue.  I'm just 
surprised it wasn't already clear what my view was.

> it makes sure we don't need another update to our work in the case 
> 'EU' is really needed.

That hypothetical future case hasn't been explained to my satisfaction, 
but whatever.

> If we as a WG, after discussing the issues, have reached a (rough) 
> consensus, then I don't think bringing up an issue again at IETF last 
> call will affect our drafts too much.

And that was my original point: to ask the tough questions in a tough 
way, as they will be asked during IETF Last Call, and to show that we 
may need firmer and better-principled answers than the ones I've heard 
so far if we want to avoid looking silly.