Re: [Ietf-languages] Recommendation not to register variant subtags of the form 0nnn

["Phillips, Addison" <[e-mail]>]

That would not happen with a 4-digit variant starting with a digit: they would always come at the end of a language tag. I tend to agree that we should avoid confusables and thus should be careful not to register such subtags just generally. But never is a long time and I could see someone (attempting to) register e.g. Gregorian year based subtags for well-attested years pre-1000, e.g. “ar-0661” (or maybe “ar-0072” ;-))

As I said, I agree in general principle, but wouldn’t we discuss it in specific at the time?

Addison

Addison Phillips
Sr. Principal SDE – I18N (Amazon)
Chair (W3C I18N WG)

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.



From: Ietf-languages [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of John Cowan
Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2020 8:09 AM
To: Martin J. Dürst <[e-mail]>
Cc: IETF Languages Discussion <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [Ietf-languages] Recommendation not to register variant subtags of the form 0nnn





I don't think so.  But I want to avoid in such contexts as spreadsheets the "U.S. postal code problem", whereby the code 07104 becomes 7104 because Excel thinks it's a number rather than a string of digits.

On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 1:08 AM Martin J. Dürst <[e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:


On 29/07/2020 11:43, John Cowan wrote:
> While BCP 47 does not forbid 4-digit variant subtags that begin with 0, I
> am hereby suggesting to the Tyrant and his Good Right Arm that such tags
> never be registered.  It would be very easy to confuse '0029' with '029'
> (Caribbean).
>
> What say you all?

Sounds good. Has such a case actually come up?

Regards,   Martin.

>
> John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        [e-mail]<mailto:[e-mail]>
> A poetical purist named Cowan                   [that's me]
> Once put the rest of us dowan.                  [on xml-dev]
> "Your verse would be sweeter / If it only had metre
> And rhymes that didn't force me to frowan."     [overpacked line!]
> --Michael Kay