RE: Pending requests

[Peter Constable <[e-mail]>]

Echoing Shawn: 

A generic subtag "simple" could be used to request/assert a simple/controlled/basic form of whatever language, with no specific claims or criteria for how the variant of a given language is defined. Is there any reason that would not meet Wikipedia's needs? Would that be generally useful?



Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Ietf-languages [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Shawn Steele
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2015 2:32 PM
To: Michael Everson <[e-mail]>; ietflang IETF Languages Discussion <[e-mail]>
Cc: Amir E. Aharoni <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Pending requests

> Yes, but as Mark (and, I think, Shawn) say: this is of very marginal use, and should be at very low priority, and could wait, perhaps indefinitely.

I don't think it should be procrastinated upon.  And I never said there shouldn't be a way of tagging it.  I'm merely questioning if this is the best way to tag it, that provides the most utility (or at least reduces confusion), in a manner that works for other similar languages.

> > With regard to wpsimple, I don't like it, since it is (more or less) for Wikipedia only (and then only for one or a few languages); even though Wikipedia is "a pretty darn'd high-volume site”.

> The specific simple variety of English for which a subtag has been sought is precisely the one used on the Wikipedia, as defined there. en-wpsimple is well-defined by the Wikipedia. en-simple could be anything by anybody. 

I'd prefer the en-simple meaning a generic simplified English. Wikipedia could choose their variant, Voice of America could choose another.  It's unlikely that we need to be particularly granular when talking about varieties of simplified English as most sites are going to only provide one simplified form (if any).  And if a user needs "simplified" English for accessibility, then they need a single tag to send to a server that works on wikipedia, cnn, yahoo or whatever.

I think an en-simple for that purpose works fine.... and I think it should be able to be applied to any language tag as fr-simple or de-simple could also be useful.  Of course in the extraordinarily rare case someone needs to differentiate between simple variations, then they would need an alternate or extended tagging mechanism.  But a -simple subtag has at least the potential of being useful to a large number of people.

-Shawn
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