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With respect to the proposed update to the Language Subtag
Registry draft-ietf-ltru-4645bis-10: I would like to lodge an objection to the deletion of the
Preferred-Value for language subtag YU. This change breaks the equivalence class relation between YU
and CS. It detrimentally changes the behavior of existing implementations. The loss of the relationship between YU and CS makes
documents that were believed to be tagged equivalently, to no longer be
equivalent. There is also no benefit to this change. To be concrete, assume a user attempts to find documents for
languages from Yugoslavia. Using the then current registry data, a query tool noting
the preferred value relationship, matches either xx-YU and xx-CS. Another user searches for documents for Serbia. A query tool using the current registry data noting the
preferred value relationship, matches either xx-YU and xx-CS. The results are in some sense accurate and complete, given
the history of the subtag. After this change in the preferred value relationship, the
query tool does not know to search for both xx-YU and xx-CS, since the registry
does not indicate a relationship. Only one or the other subtag is used for each
query. However, the query results are now incomplete since some documents for
xx-YU have been tagged with the one-time preferred tag of xx-CS. Comments in the registry are not a solution. Comments are a
good thing for recording rationale and tangential history. However,
implementers are not going to go thru and read the comments on any or all tags
in order to make a correct implementation. They are going to implement based on
the schema and operate with the data values. The registry should stay as it is with respect to YU and
retain CS as the preferred value. As CS is now being used as a preferred value, deprecated or
not, there isn't a compelling motivation to remove the preferred value for YU. Please eliminate this needless change that breaks
applications relying on the relationship between YU and CS. tex |
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