Hi John, Thanks for your note back. First I'll respond to a trivial item and then, separately, to the STD/BCP question. You wrote: > (ii) > The idea of using a registry of components (in this case > subtags) that can be mixed and matched at the implementer's > discretion, albeit according to specific rules, is somewhat > untested in the IETF and the Internet applications community. Perhaps true in most respects, but not with regard to RFC 3066! RFC 3066 allows specific tag registration, yes, but it also includes a generative syntax (albeit not identified formally as such). Thus the concern you have about people doing subtag mix-and-match already exists in RFC 3066 (as I'm sure you're aware) and the community has ample experience with that. Here are some perfectly valid RFC 3066 tags that are silly or at least dubious and also not registered: tlh-AQ (Klingon as used in the Antarctic) it-SG (Italian as used in Singapore) zh-CO (Chinese as used in Columbia) ang-TL (Old English as used in Timor Leste) cs-CS (Czech as used in Serbia and Montenegro) So... RFC 3066 has already tested the idea thoroughly and we are just dancing in the margins (he says, squinting VERY hard to ignore obvious questions of order of magnitude). Addison Addison P. Phillips Globalization Architect, Quest Software Chair, W3C Internationalization Core Working Group Internationalization is not a feature. It is an architecture. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf