Re: Last Call: 'Tags for Identifying Languages' to BCP

At 02:50 29/08/2005, Peter Constable wrote:
> > From: Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com>
> > It's unclear what you're trying to get at here.  A URI scheme is a
> > protocol element (an "assigned number") registered by IANA, not a
> > piece of text (see RFCs 1958 and 2277).  As such, it has no need of
> > an indication of language, for it has no language; it is a language-
> > independent protocol element.
>
>This point was made in response to Mr. Morfin on more than one occasion
>within the LTRU WG. He appears to be unwilling to accept it, however.

Peter ....
we all know you are worth better than that!

you just show that you ignore what URI Tags are. This is embarrassing 
for you since your whole problem is the conflict of your proposition 
with this accepted RFC....

> > ought to be a means of indicating language in IDNs.  However, that is
> > primarily an issue with the IDN specification(s), not with the
>document
> > under discussion (except to the extent that the document under
> > discussion extends the likely length of tags
>
>In comparison to RFC 3066, the draft does not extend the likely length
>of tags.

There is a confusion between two lengths. The length of the tag and 
the length of the subtags. The whole issue is that Peter's colleagues 
want to consider private and specialised tags as subtags, and impose 
them the size of a subtag instead of the size of a tag. This 
is  where is the exclusion. This trick cannot stay for long: but if 
they get it accepted for now, this gives them time to establish their 
positions.

This means that the legitimate URI tag:
"tags:x-tags.org:constable.english.x-tag.org"
must be accommodated into the format 
"x-xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-etc." instead of 
"0-x-tags.org:constable.english.x-tag.org"

This can only lead to a confusing deprecation of the RFC 3066bis 
which will be replaced by a generalised IRI-tags solution. The 
solution I propose consists only in accepting that what the Draft 
would call "specialised subtags" have a size limited to the tag 
length - 2, and an URI-tag charset.

NB. Since "x-" was used in RFC 3066 and it has been pointed to me 
that a specific privateuse (in a VPN for example) could be needed, we 
selected "0-" for an open format. Actually we suggest "1-" for an 
encrypted format. No work has been yet carried on this.

>The likely length of tags is precisely the same as before; the
>main difference is that this draft imposes significant structural
>constraints on tags.

Absolutely. This is the area of contention.

Peter takes a loosely applied chancy non-exclusive proposition, to 
make it the significantly constrained exclusive rule of the Internet 
instead of correcting it and following the ISO innovation (ISO 639-6 
and ISO 11179) as directed by the Charter. This permits him to 
exclude competitive propositions following or preceding that innovation.

With the trick above: length and character wise a private tag is a subtag.
.... and the lack of explanation of how billions of machines will 
know about the daily updated version of his 600 K file, without 
anyone paying for it, but me and the like.

jfc 

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