Re: [Ltru] RFC4645 to Historic status

[Doug Ewell <[e-mail]>]

Randy Presuhn wrote:

> "Broken URIs that were likely valid at the time of publication are,
> strictly speaking, not subject to errata reports. That said, the AD
> must judge the importance of correcting such a reference and may
> classify the report as Verified."
>
> Since, as Doug has already explained, it is unclear why anyone would
> reasonably use informational RFC 4645 to find the registry (rather
> than going by way of the current BCP, for example), I don't see any
> pressing need to accept this proposed erratum, but from the above-
> quoted policy the decision is clearly in the hands of the relevant AD.

Originally, in responding to this errata report, I misread my own 17-year-old document and wrote that I had erred in referring to the old Language Tag Registry using the word "subtag" instead of "tag." That is not what happened, and in fact it turns out I made no error.

The text is question is this, the entirety of RFC 4645, Section 3:

| The remainder of this section specified the initial set of records for
| the registry.  This material was deleted on publication of this memo,
| to avoid any potential confusion with the registry itself.  The IANA
| language subtag registry can be found at
| <http://www.iana.org/numbers.html> under "Language Tags".

That link, which now redirects to https://www.iana.org/protocols , is the IANA "Protocol Registries" landing page which contains scores of links, including five under the heading "Language Tags":

1. Directory of language tag applications - OBSOLETE
[incorrectly labeled "RFC 4646"]

2. Language Subtag Registry
[current]

3. Language Subtag Registry - Registration Templates
[current, informational only]

4. Language Tag Extensions Registry
[current]

5. Language Tags
[obsolete, and incorrectly labeled "RFC 4646"]

So a link to the current (since 2006) Language Subtag Registry *does* exist at the (redirected) location specified in RFC 4645. It does not happen to be the direct link, which did not yet exist in September 2006, but which most references (including the OpenID document) should and do use today. But it is there. The passage in 4645 was not wrong then, and is not wrong today.

What *is* wrong is the presentation of items on the Protocol Registries page. Items 1 and 5 above are obsolete and need to be moved to a separate, clearly marked "Obsolete" section, or removed altogether. But once again, and hopefully once and for all, this is neither a past nor a present error in RFC 4645.

I am willing to explain all this again to whoever at IANA is in charge of maintaining that page.

--
Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org