Subject: Re: [Ltru] I'm really confused by chinese in 3066bis

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 16:11:18 -0600

Edmon Chung <edmon at afilias dot info> wrote:

> Is it possible to do cmn-min?

No.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Arvada, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
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From: "Ira McDonald" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 20:21:09 -0400

Hi,

The universe is not *just* a web browser.

Karen is tagging spoken languages in audio media (among other things).

Printer vendors and vendors of *every* other kind of network-connected
product are tagging written (and increasingly spoken) languages for their
local console and remote (non-browser) interfaces.

Truncation fallback has been around as long as language tags.  Developers
who aren't language experts are going to continue to usually use it.

"zh-cmn" fallback to "zh" would have worked (more or less) in most software.

"cmn" fallback to "zh" is NOT going to work in most software in the future
(because it depends on "and then a miracle happens" logic).

Sticking scripts into language tags *in that location* is still a lousy idea,
as Karen's comments make clear.

RFC 4646 had problems - RFC 4646bis has bigger problems.

Even if miraculously we could retrain/re-educate all the software
developers and content developers, we can *never* accomplish
that with all the poor end users on the planet.

Cheers,
- Ira (now consulting at Samsung Advanced Printing Systems Lab)

-- 
Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
Chair - Linux Foundation Open Printing WG
Blue Roof Music/High North Inc
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From: Leif Halvard Silli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 04 May 2008 09:06:32 +0200

> that with all the poor end users on the planet.

I subscribe wholeheartedly to these views. Extlang tags are 
userfriendly. Or perhaps I should say *use* friendly.
-- 
leif halvard silli
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From: "Andrew Cunningham" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 May 2008 02:13:45 +1000

Extlang tags may work well for the Norweigan case, but ...

Extlang tags solve some problems and create other problems.

I doubt there is a single neat way of handling all this. At some point
some processing needs to occur. many applications sue a simplistic
approach to language tags. With the inclusion of ISO-639-3 and the
expansion of languages, things are more complex.

At some point applications and servers have to implement ways of
addressing those complexities.

But life will be easier, if we just assume "zh" = Chinese (not further
specified)

and try to educate users and developers.

-- 
Andrew Cunningham
Vicnet Research and Development Coordinator
State Library of Victoria
Australia

[email-masked]
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From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 11:11:33 -0600

> The universe is not *just* a web browser.

Absolutely correct.  I'm not sure what I wrote that elicited that 

>> Is it possible to do cmn-min?

Which is true, and would have been true even if we had gone ahead with 
extlangs, because 'min' (Minangkabau) would not have ever been an 
extlang under 'cmn' (Mandarin Chinese).  I think Edmon Chung meant to 
write "cmn-nan", because 'nan' is the correct subtag for Min Nan, but 
Min Nan also would not have been an extlang under Mandarin.  The 
"language-hyphen-language" syntax means "extended language hierarchy," 
not "user-defined fallback strategy."

> "cmn" fallback to "zh" is NOT going to work in most software in the 
> future (because it depends on "and then a miracle happens" logic).

I completely agree with that, and made the same argument as you when the 
arguments against extlang began to surface.  But those arguments were 
what won the day, and that issue is closed.

> Sticking scripts into language tags *in that location* is still a 
> lousy idea, as Karen's comments make clear.

That battle was fought already during development of RFC 4646.  But at 
least matching engines can be taught to pick apart a tag into its 
constituent subtags, and strip out the script subtag, without looking at 
the Registry; whereas the cmn/zh scenario does require matchers to 
consult the Registry, which seems unlikely to happen in practice, as you 
said.

Changing the position of script subtags at this point would be a 
massively destabilizing proposition, and almost certainly would not be 
acceptable to IETF.  Reintroducing extlangs would entail a huge amount 
of rethinking and rewriting, and delay, and I doubt this will be 
acceptable to IETF either.

---

From: "Ira McDonald" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 May 2008 13:29:20 -0400

Hi Doug,

Sorry - I wasn't specifically responding to your comments at all.

I was expressing (poorly, obviously) my frustration with the fact
that the LTRU email threads too often jump from the abstract
(syntax of language tags) to the particular (use of language
tags) using only examples of the HTTP mechanisms and the
behavior of browsers.

XML itself (which has a dramatically broader scope of current
usage than HTTP/HTML) depends on language tags.

I'm pretty uncomfortable with the "and then a miracle happens"
logic that at some unspecified future date we'll migrate from
using the grandfathered "zh-cmn" to simply "cmn".  I agree
with Shawn that this future date may be imaginary.

Cheers,
- Ira

On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Doug Ewell <[email-masked]> wrote:
>  Absolutely correct.  I'm not sure what I wrote that elicited that response.
> What I wrote was:
>
>
>
> >
> extlangs, because 'min' (Minangkabau) would not have ever been an extlang
> under 'cmn' (Mandarin Chinese).  I think Edmon Chung meant to write
> "cmn-nan", because 'nan' is the correct subtag for Min Nan, but Min Nan also
> would not have been an extlang under Mandarin.  The
> "language-hyphen-language" syntax means "extended language hierarchy," not
> "user-defined fallback strategy."
>
>
>
> arguments against extlang began to surface.  But those arguments were what
> won the day, and that issue is closed.
>
>
>
> > Sticking scripts into language tags *in that location* is still a lousy
> idea, as Karen's comments make clear.
> >
>
> constituent subtags, and strip out the script subtag, without looking at the
> Registry; whereas the cmn/zh scenario does require matchers to consult the
> Registry, which seems unlikely to happen in practice, as you said.
>
>  Changing the position of script subtags at this point would be a massively
> destabilizing proposition, and almost certainly would not be acceptable to
> IETF.  Reintroducing extlangs would entail a huge amount of rethinking and
> rewriting, and delay, and I doubt this will be acceptable to IETF either.
>
>
>
>  --