Re: [Ltru] ISO 639-6 (was: Geocoordinates)

John Cowan <cowan at ccil dot org> wrote:

> (a) codes for language collections that aren't in 639-5, which could 
> be added to BCP 47 as 4-letter primary language subtags (that size is 
> currently reserved);

*If* we are to support these code elements, I think this is the right 
place to do so.  The 4-letter language subtag was reserved in BCP 47 for 
exactly this purpose, and if anyone, such as (ahem) Peter, sees a 
conflict with this due to their "derivative use of the language tag 
syntax," I'm sorry to say it, but that is a problem of their own making.

> (b) codes for variants other than script and national variants, which 
> could be added to BCP 47 as 5-character variant subtags by adding a 
> 5th character (I propose prefixing '6').

(and later)

> I wasn't proposing a singleton, but a convention: variant code abcd 
> would come into BCP 47 as variant subtag 6abcd, to avoid confusing it 
> with script subtags.

I continue to be strongly opposed to adding hundreds or even thousands 
of variant subtags, using the same mechanism we currently use to 
register variants one by one.  The boonts and fonipas and njivas would 
be completely overwhelmed by the oceans of 6xxxx subtags.

If these don't qualify as language subtags, for whatever reason, then 
they should be encoded using the extension mechanism described in 
Section 3.7 of RFC 4646, preferably with an appropriate singleton such 
as '6'.  This would be orders of magnitude more appropriate than 
variants.

--
Doug Ewell  *  Thornton, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
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