Re: [Ltru] Macrolanguage usage

Hi -

As a technical contributor...

> From: "Mark Davis" <mark.davis@icu-project.org>
> To: "Doug Ewell" <doug@ewellic.org>
> Cc: "LTRU Working Group" <ltru@ietf.org>
> Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 11:08 AM
> Subject: Re: [Ltru] Macrolanguage usage
...
> The only thing that the text is saying is that when there is a predominant
> language, for backwards compatibility -- AND with some careful caveats --
> the above is broadened. This is *not* with respect to permissibility, but
> with respect to recommended practice.
> 
>    - It is *permissible* to tag Mandarin text with "und" or "zh" or "cmn".
>       - It is a *good idea* to tag/lookup with "cmn"*, except that for
>       backwards compatibility, "zh" may be better for many implementations.*
>    - It is *permissible* to tag Standard Arabic text with "und" or "ar" or
>    "arb".
>       - It is a *good idea* to tag/lookup with "arb"*, except that for
>       backwards compatibility, "ar" may be better for many implementations.*
> 
> That lets people like Google, which has a very serious and important issue
> with backwards compatibility, support the vast amount of Mandarin/Arabic/...
> that is tagged with "zh", and continue to tag Mandarin content with "zh". It
> also lets people like Shawn's group at Microsoft, having no backwards
> compatibility issues with "cmn" and "zh", to shift over immediately.
> 
> It is also orthogonal to the recommendation for non-predominant encompassed
> languages, where we would tag with the more specific tags: "yue",
> "yue-Hant-HK", "yue-Hant-US", "abh-AF", and so on, once they are available.
...

I'd re-frame it in slightly different terms, as an example of the "tag wisely"
principle, rather than as anything that might be understood as a recommendation.
"For some applications, it is possible that there will be cases where it could
be advantageous to deliberately use a tag which is imprecise.  For example,
due to the peculiar situation of written Chinese, an application with large
quantities of legacy textual data already tagged with 'zh' might countinue
to use this over-broad tag even for new data which would more precisely be
tagged with 'cmn'."

Randy

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