Re: [Ltru] my technical position on extlang

Gerard Meijssen <gerard dot meijssen at gmail dot com> wrote:

> Hoi,
> The current situation is that the biggest amount of content on the 
> Internet is not tagged. Languages that are "less and least resourced" 
> can not be found because standards and software both do not 
> acknowledge them.

The problem here is the continued unavailability to the public of RFC 
4646bis, due to the surreal delay that has been introduced in this 
second round of LTRU.  We were originally supposed to go to IETF Last 
Call in early 2006, if I remember correctly.

This isn't even about the protracted debate over extlang, which at least 
is fundamental to the update and mentioned prominently in the WG 
charter.  This is about all the other changes -- enhancing validity 
checking, tweaking the ABNF, obsessing over "und" and "mis" and "zxx", 
haggling over "EU" and "UK" -- that are not mentioned in the charter at 
all, or are loosely alluded to but were "not expected to delay the 
progress of the work."  It's also about drafts being published and 
sitting for months without substantive comment from the group.

I share Gerard's concern about the inability to tag minority languages 
(without resorting to private-use tags).  When RFC 4646bis and the new 
Registry are published, it will be possible to tag virtually anything, 
even if the representation or hierarchy or fallback isn't perfect.  But 
I have often wondered if the word isn't "when," but "if."

Please read the current drafts and send your specific comments (or your 
LGTM's) to the list, as well as your responses to Randy's consensus-call 
questions, so we can get these documents out of the WG and start IETF 
Last Call -- which I guarantee will not be a rubber-stamp process 
either.

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ltru-4646bis-14.txt
Alternative format available at:
http://www.inter-locale.com/ID/draft-ietf-ltru-4646bis-14.html

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ltru-4645bis-05.txt
Alternative formats available at:
http://www.ewellic.org/rfc4645bis.html

--
Doug Ewell  *  Arvada, Colorado, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
http://www.ewellic.org
http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages  ˆ

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