Re: [Ltru] Review of 4646bis-10, macrolanguages in section 4.1

LGTM

On Dec 7, 2007 1:55 PM, John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org> wrote:

> Because of the thicket of rewordings in this part, I'm just presenting
> my suggested revised text here.  It's very important to make sure
> that we don't talk about "dialects" or "sub-languages" here.  Also,
> I've used "Macrolanguage" for the header only, but "macrolanguage"
> for the languages.
>
> The affected text begins "Languages with a Macrolanguage field" and ends
> "did not specify zh-Hans-CN in their request.)".
>
>        Some of the languages in the registry are labeled
>        "macrolanguages" by ISO 639-3, which defines the term as
>        "clusters of closely-related language varieties that [...] can
>        be considered distinct individual languages, yet in certain
>        usage contexts a single language identity for all is needed".
>        These correspond to codes registered in ISO 639-2 as single
>        languages that were found to correspond to more than one language
>        in ISO 639-3.  The languages encompassed by a macrolanguage
>        contain a Macrolanguage header in the registry; the macrolanguages
>        themselves are not specially marked.
>
>        It is always permitted, and sometimes useful, to tag an
>        encompassed language using the subtag for its macrolanguage.
>        However, the Macrolanguage field doesn't define what the
>        relationship is between the encompassed language and its
>        macrolanguage, nor does it define how languages encompassed by the
>        same macrolanguage are related to each other.  In some cases, In
>        some cases, one of the encompassed languages serves as a standard
>        form for the entire macrolanguage and is frequently identified
>        with it; in other cases there is no dominant language, and the
>        macrolanguage simply serves as a cover term for the entire group.
>
>        Applications MAY use macrolanguage information to improve matching
>        or language negotiation.  For example, the information that 'sr'
>        (Serbian) and 'hr' (Croatian) share a macrolanguage expresses
>        a closer relation between those languages than between, say,
>        'sr' (Serbian) and 'ma' (Macedonian).  It is valid to use the
>        subtag of the encompassed language or of the macrolanguage to
>        form language tags.  However, many matching applications will
>        not be aware of the relationship between the languages.  Care in
>        selecting which subtags are used is crucial to interoperability.
>
>        In general, use the most specific tag.  However, where the
>        macrolanguage tag has been historically used to denote a dominant
>        encompassed language, it SHOULD be used in place of the subtag
>        specific to that encompassed language unless it is necessary
>        to clearly distinguish the macrolanguage as a whole from the
>        dominant language variety.
>
>        In particular, the Chinese family of languages call for special
>        consideration.  Because the written form is very similar for most
>        languages having 'zh' as a macrolanguage (and because historically
>        subtags for the various encompassed languages were not available),
>        languages such as 'yue' (Cantonese) have historically used
>        either 'zh' or a tag (now grandfathered) beginning with 'zh'.
>        This means that macrolanguage information can be usefully
>        applied when searching for content or when providing fallbacks
>        in language negotiation.  For example, the information that 'yue'
>        has a macrolangauge of 'zh' could be used in the Lookup algorithm
>        to fallback from a request for "yue-Hans-CN" to "zh-Hans-CN"
>        without losing the script and region information (even though
>        the user did not specify "zh-Hans-CN" in their request).
>
> --
> John Cowan              cowan@ccil.org          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan<http://www.ccil.org/%7Ecowan>
> Any day you get all five woodpeckers is a good day.  --Elliotte Rusty
> Harold
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ltru mailing list
> Ltru@ietf.org
> https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru
>

-- 
Mark