> From: John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> > (iii) One way to read this document, and 3066 itself for > that matter, is that they constitute a critique of IS > 639 in terms of its adequacy for Internet use. Not exactly. It reflects that ISO 639 alone does not support all of the linguistically-related distinctions that need to be declared about content on the Internet -- something that ISO 639 itself acknowledges (in general, not just in relation to the Internet). Just as RFC 1766/3066 also use ISO 3166 country codes to make sub-language distinctions (e.g. to distinguish vocabulary or spelling), so also there is a need to use ISO 15924 to distinguish between different written forms of a given language. The proposed draft incorporates ISO 15924 -- something that very nearly happened in RFC 3066, but did not since ISO 15924 was still in process and (as I see it) those of us involved needed more time to evaluate the idea (which has happened in the years since then, to the point that we have confindence about this step). RFC 1766/3066 also allowed tags to include subtags used for various purposes, and some tags have been registered to reflect sub-language variations other than those that can be captured using country (or script) IDs. This is another way in which ISO 639 alone is not sufficient, and the need for tags that include such variant subtags has been demonstrated. The proposed draft constrains the structure of tags including such variant subtags so as to avoid haphazard and inconsistent structuring of tags, which would present signficant problems. (Of course, that is not all that the proposed draft does.) Thus, I would not describe this as a critique of ISO 639. It is simply a recognition that ISO 639 itself makes that there are language distinctions that often need to be made that ISO 639 itself does not make. > From > that perspective, the difference between the two is that > 3066 was prepared specifically to meet known and > identifiable Internet protocol requirements that were > not in the scope of IS 639. The new proposal is more > general and seems to have much the same scope as ISO > 639-2 has, or should have. The scope of what is needed for Internet language tags is greater than the scope of ISO 639-2, which is even more limited than the general comments I made about wrt ISO 639 (which comments are equally applicable to ISO 639-1, ISO 639-2 or ISO DIS 639-3). > It is not in the IETF's > interest to second-guess the established standards of > other standards bodies when that can be avoided and, > despite the good efforts of an excellent and qualified > choice or tag reviewer, this is not an area in which the > IETF (and still less the IANA) are deeply expert. So > there is a case to be made that this draft should be > handed off to ISO TC 37 for processing, either for > integration into IS 639-2 or, perhaps, as the basis of a > new document that integrates the language coding of > 639-2 with the script coding of IS 15924. Speaking as a member of TC 37, of the ISO 639-RA Joint Advisory Committee, and project editor for ISO 639-3, I can say that it would be possible for TC 37 to take on a project to develop a standard for language-tags that addresses some of the needs this draft is attempting to meet, such as integrating ISO 15924. Note, though, that incorporation of this draft (or even RFC 1766/3066) into ISO 639-2 would be well beyond the scope of ISO 639-2. Something of this nature would necessarily involve a distinct standard, and perhaps one that is not part of the ISO 639 series. I'd also like to observe that various members of TC 37 and the ISO 639-RA/JAC have observed or participated in the development of this draft. For my part, it is not the draft I would have developed if I had undertaken it, but I see no problems with it from a TC 37 or ISO 639-RA/JAC perspective. Peter Constable _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf