Re: [Ltru] my technical position on extlang

I agree with Martin very strongly.

However, I do think that there is a danger that the end user will mistag
'zh-yue' as 'yue' and 'zh-cmn' as 'cmn'; purely from looking at ISO 639-3.
I think that this should be highlighted in the document and that users
should be advised to allow for it; where 'yue' is presented it SHOULD be
converted to 'zh-yue' etc.

It really must be made perfectly clear that 'zh' is only to be used when
referring to Chinese languages as a whole or when the individual language
within 'zh' is unknown.

best regards

Debbie

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ltru-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:ltru-bounces@ietf.org] On
> Behalf Of Martin Duerst
> Sent: 18 May 2008 02:46
> To: LTRU Working Group
> Subject: [Ltru] my technical position on extlang
>
> As a technical contributor, this is my technical position on extlang:
>
> To me, the very recent discussion has shown that going back
> to extlangs is preferable. The main reason for this, for me,
> is that it's easier to explain and deploy. There are very few
> people, even on this list, who can exactly explain why and
> where extlangs pose problems, and why they might be
> (somewhat) less desirable than not having them in some
> circumstances. On the other hand, explaining to people that
> zh is Chinese, zh-yue is Cantonese, and zh-cmn is Mandarin,
> seems more straightforward. Designing good standards and good
> technology means looking at all the details, but then going
> back to make sure the big picture is right.
>
> In my understanding, one of the main points against extlangs
> was that the "remove from the right" fallback hierarchy may
> not be right. That may or may not be true, depending on the
> case at hand, but that may or may not be true also for the
> relative order of script and region. Here, there is an
> advantage of having the hierarchy in the tag. More advanced
> matching algorithms can be developped without having to do
> registry lookup.
>
> So as a consequence, I personally favor going back to using
> extlangs, preferably exclusively.
>
> I'm okay with using extlangs only for those cases that
> already have a macrolanguage subtag currently available, or
> some other reasonable, not too 'cherry-picky' cutoff.
>
> I'm opposed to allowing both extlang and independent tags
> (i.e. both zh-yue and yue), but if that's what we as a WG
> decide, I can live with it.
>
>
> Regards,    Martin.
>
>
> #-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
> #-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp
> mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp
>
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>

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