Subject: Re: [Ltru] extlang or not extlang

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 22:02:19 -0600

"Phillips, Addison" <addison at amazon dot com> wrote:

> So... to bring this full circle. Assuming that you'd be willing to 
> compromise with the no-extlangistas by going with option #2, would the 
> following text (replacing the text about macrolanguages in draft-13) 
> work for you? What would you change?

Speaking not for Karen, but as an extlangista at heart, I think 
Addison's text is about the best we're going to get.  It is certainly 
much better than talking about deprecating either 'zh' or 'cmn'.

Realistically, we aren't going to get a perfectly clean mechanism for 
tagging Chinese unless we literally want to say "some kind of Chinese, I 
don't know or care which variety."  With extlang, we had both the macro 
and encompassed languages represented in the same tag, so the connection 
was apparent to anyone who needed it; without it, somebody has to go to 
the Registry to find the connection.  But since we're not going to get 
extlang, I think we should settle on this revision and move on.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Arvada, 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

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From: Leif Halvard Silli <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 02:59:31 +0200

> much better than talking about deprecating either 'zh' or 'cmn'.

Perhaps you could enlighten us about where you saw any fundamental 
difference from before?
-- 
leif halvard silli
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From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 21:26:48 -0600

> Perhaps you could enlighten us about where you saw any fundamental 

Sure.  Draft-13 paid a lot of attention to the supposed identity between 
certain macrolanguages and their "standard" encompassed language.  It 
emphasized Chinese as a "special consideration" case, and it focused on 
searching and fallback strategies instead of tag creation, which is what 
most people reading RFC 4646bis will be looking for.

Draft-14 employs Chinese as a "useful illustration" of the 
macro/encompassed problem, rather than a special case, which should 
prove more useful for helping users decide what tags are best for other 
situations such as Arabic and Quechua.  It does a better job of 
explaining past usage, and it does a better job of explaining the 
advantages and disadvantages to tagging with the macrolanguage versus 
the encompassed language.  It is practical; it is the complete opposite 
of trying to "wish away" one subtag or the other.

IMHO, the RFC should offer guidance rather than iron-clad law when it 
comes to this particular issue, because it is not black and white.  The 
new text is a noticeable improvement in this regard.