Re: [Ltru] RE: STD (was: Last Call: 'Tags for Identifying Languages'toBCP)
I am sorry to impose again the community, what starts amounting to ad-hominems. Please, Brian advise if inadequate. At 04:26 29/08/2005, Peter Constable wrote: > From: JFC (Jefsey) Morfin [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > The > proposed langtag is an arbitrary limited compound of three > information: language name, script and country. A language > identification MAY call for far more elements, and deliver much more > information. Mr. Morfin has often suggested to the LTRU WG that language tags should be able to provide greater information than is allowed by the draft. He has never provided any specific proposal except a request to permit certain private-use tags, which I will return to below. Dear Peter, This kind of repetition now abuse no one. I bored everyone enough in explaining that two additional subtags were necessary IMHO: the referent and the context. There is also - a way or another the need of the date of the reference (this can be a date or included in a subtag). This is documented at length in a mail of mine today. I will not repeat it. I will only suggest you study Word. The consensus of the remainder of the LTRU WG is that the draft supports all relevant distinctions needed to describe the linguistic and written-form attributes of content as may be needed for all purposes, commercial and otherwise. This is an historic statement I hope no one will forget. Every searcher and engineer knows the value of such final "all". Just in case: the langtag is not supposed to only support the written-form attributes, but to be multimodal (cf. Peter Constable). Please quote the voice, signs, icons, mood, etc. subtags. > This means that: > - "fr-Latn-fr" is the default tag based upon ISO 639-1/2/3 > - "x-fran" is a private use tag based upon ISO 639-6 > - "0-jefsey.com:franver" is my vision of the French at the Palace of > Versailles. Documented by an ISO 11179 conformant system (see below) Two comments: First, Mr. Morfin suggested within the LTRU WG that the syntax for language tags should be loosened to permit additional characters, such as "." and ":". This is a false affirmation. I did two things: - benefiting from the marvelous capacity to direct the WG-ltru decisions in proposing the necessary opposite, I made sure the ABNF would be fool proof (this is not yet exactly the case as they did not always find the proper [cf. Peter] "constraints". - I supported the proposition of an African searcher (they treated of troll) to reconcile the desire of a strict ABNF expressed by the WG affinity group and the users, R&D and innovation (following ISO evolution) support to use the URI-tags RFC in proposing first to use the "private use" area. As indicated, a remark shown me it was a wrong choice, the private use area also addressing other needs. I then came to the conclusion that using the present Draft as a default non exclusive solution, and some reserved numeric "singleton" as the hooks for URI-tags was preserving the work made by the WG, while addressing the needs of the rest of the world, avoiding an unnecessary conflict. The remainder of the WG was in consensus that this was unacceptable due to backward incompatibility with processes designed to conform to RFC 3066. Secondly, Mr. Morfin has repeatedly made mention of ISO 11179, a series of ISO standards on metadata and metadata registries, indicating his view that language tags used on the Internet should be maintained in a registry conformant with ISO 11179, and therefore that the draft should make reference to those standards. He has also, on several occasions such as his comments above, cited ISO 11179 in relation to his views in a manner that appears to be intended to suggest that his views are superior to the draft because he has cited that series of standards while the draft does not. The Draft addresses targets you defined a long ago. It was presented privately (twice) and is now presented as a WG document. The document having not changed, one can expect that it keeps the same targets. You consider it addresses them "all". There can therefore be no "superior" views. There are different targets. My target is protect the R&D, users, and Internet innovation. In a nutshell, I do _not_ believe that a draft crafted by a few individuals can supports all the relevant distinctions needed to describe the linguistic and written-form attributes of content as may be needed for all purposes, commercial and otherwise. And I want to protect other searchers and cultures' right to have their own solutions, _without_conflict_ and detriment to _your_solution_. The real solution is IRI-tags we will document as soon as the URI-tags RFC is published. But that will create a deployment conflict with your application, due to your sponsors. No one needs that. A reality check is in need here: - While Mr. Morfin cites ISO 11179, he has never made statements that clearly indicate that he actually understands those standards. I propose everyone having time to spend to rea
Re: [Ltru] RE: STD (was: Last Call: 'Tags for Identifying Languages'toBCP)
I am sorry to impose again the community, what starts amounting to ad-hominems. I am used to that, but the quality of the person and the serious looking of the mail calls for a reponse. In particular in this case, where two majors points are documented. Sorry, Peter. Please, Brian advise if inadequate. At 04:26 29/08/2005, Peter Constable wrote: > From: JFC (Jefsey) Morfin [ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > The > proposed langtag is an arbitrary limited compound of three > information: language name, script and country. A language > identification MAY call for far more elements, and deliver much more > information. Mr. Morfin has often suggested to the LTRU WG that language tags should be able to provide greater information than is allowed by the draft. He has never provided any specific proposal except a request to permit certain private-use tags, which I will return to below. Dear Peter, This kind of repetition now abuse no one. I bored everyone enough in explaining that two additional subtags were necessary IMHO: the referent and the context. There is also - a way or another the need of the date of the reference (this can be a date or included in a subtag). This is documented at length in a mail of mine today. I will not repeat it. I will only suggest you study Word. The consensus of the remainder of the LTRU WG is that the draft supports all relevant distinctions needed to describe the linguistic and written-form attributes of content as may be needed for all purposes, commercial and otherwise. This is an historic statement I hope no one will forget. Every searcher and engineer knows the value of such final "all". Just in case: the langtag is not supposed to only support the written-form attributes, but to be multimodal (cf. Peter Constable). Please quote the voice, signs, icons, mood, etc. subtags. > This means that: > - "fr-Latn-fr" is the default tag based upon ISO 639-1/2/3 > - "x-fran" is a private use tag based upon ISO 639-6 > - "0-jefsey.com:franver" is my vision of the French at the Palace of > Versailles. Documented by an ISO 11179 conformant system (see below) Two comments: First, Mr. Morfin suggested within the LTRU WG that the syntax for language tags should be loosened to permit additional characters, such as "." and ":". This is a false affirmation. I did two things: - benefiting from the marvelous capacity to direct the WG-ltru decisions in proposing the necessary opposite, I made sure the ABNF would be fool proof (this is not yet exactly the case as they did not always find the proper [cf. Peter] "constraints". - I supported the proposition of an African searcher (they treated of troll) to reconcile the desire of a strict ABNF expressed by the WG affinity group and the users, R&D and innovation (following ISO evolution) support to use the URI-tags RFC in proposing first to use the "private use" area. As indicated, a remark shown me it was a wrong choice, the private use area also addressing other needs. I then came to the conclusion that using the present Draft as a default non exclusive solution, and some reserved numeric "singleton" as the hooks for URI-tags was preserving the work made by the WG, while addressing the needs of the rest of the world, avoiding an unnecessary conflict. The remainder of the WG was in consensus that this was unacceptable due to backward incompatibility with processes designed to conform to RFC 3066. Secondly, Mr. Morfin has repeatedly made mention of ISO 11179, a series of ISO standards on metadata and metadata registries, indicating his view that language tags used on the Internet should be maintained in a registry conformant with ISO 11179, and therefore that the draft should make reference to those standards. He has also, on several occasions such as his comments above, cited ISO 11179 in relation to his views in a manner that appears to be intended to suggest that his views are superior to the draft because he has cited that series of standards while the draft does not. The Draft addresses targets you defined a long ago. It was presented privately (twice) and is now presented as a WG document. The document having not changed, one can expect that it keeps the same targets. You consider it addresses them "all". There can therefore be no "superior" views. There are different targets. My target is protect the R&D, users, and Internet innovation. In a nutshell, I do _not_ believe that a draft crafted by a few individuals can supports all the relevant distinctions needed to describe the linguistic and written-form attributes of content as may be needed for all purposes, commercial and otherwise. And I want to protect other searchers and cultures' right to have their own solutions, _without_conflict_ and detriment to _your_solution_. The real solution is IRI-tags we will document as soon as the URI-tags RFC is published. But that will create a deployment conflict with your application, due to your sponsors. No one needs that. A reality check is in need
RE: STD (was: Last Call: 'Tags for Identifying Languages'toBCP)
> From: JFC (Jefsey) Morfin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > An exchange on WG-ltru documents... In this post from Mr. Morfin, it is difficult (at least for me) to ascertain his point other than in relation to certain specifics: > The > proposed langtag is an arbitrary limited compound of three > information: language name, script and country. A language > identification MAY call for far more elements, and deliver much more > information. Mr. Morfin has often suggested to the LTRU WG that language tags should be able to provide greater information than is allowed by the draft. He has never provided any specific proposal except a request to permit certain private-use tags, which I will return to below. The consensus of the remainder of the LTRU WG is that the draft supports all relevant distinctions needed to describe the linguistic and written-form attributes of content as may be needed for all purposes, commercial and otherwise. > This means that: > - "fr-Latn-fr" is the default tag based upon ISO 639-1/2/3 > - "x-fran" is a private use tag based upon ISO 639-6 > - "0-jefsey.com:franver" is my vision of the French at the Palace of > Versailles. Documented by an ISO 11179 conformant system (see below) Two comments: First, Mr. Morfin suggested within the LTRU WG that the syntax for language tags should be loosened to permit additional characters, such as "." and ":". The remainder of the WG was in consensus that this was unacceptable due to backward incompatibility with processes designed to conform to RFC 3066. Secondly, Mr. Morfin has repeatedly made mention of ISO 11179, a series of ISO standards on metadata and metadata registries, indicating his view that language tags used on the Internet should be maintained in a registry conformant with ISO 11179, and therefore that the draft should make reference to those standards. He has also, on several occasions such as his comments above, cited ISO 11179 in relation to his views in a manner that appears to be intended to suggest that his views are superior to the draft because he has cited that series of standards while the draft does not. A reality check is in need here: - While Mr. Morfin cites ISO 11179, he has never made statements that clearly indicate that he actually understands those standards. - While Mr. Morfin refers to "an ISO 11179 conformant system", none of the ISO 11179 series of standards contains any statement of conformance requirements. Thus, no such notion of "ISO 11179 conformant" is defined anywhere. All that can be said is that a system of metadata elements is maintained and administered using a certain amount of the conceptual model, practice and administrative infrastructure specified in the ISO 11179 standards. The draft uses some measure of these, though it does not make normative reference to ISO 11179. In terms of ISO 11179 notions, each entry in the proposed registry includes the two essential components of a metadata element: a representation, and a data element concept. Each item in the registry indicates (i) the representation used in language tags, (ii) a designator that indicates the value meaning and that can also serve as the data identifier, (iii) the object class (its "type"), (iv) the administrative status (limited to deprecated or not deprecated), as well as other properties. Thus, while it cannot formally be said that the draft conforms to ISO 11179 (since no terms of conformance are defined), I think it *can* reasonably be said that the draft creates a registry and system of metadata elements that is consistent with the model presented in ISO 11179. - The primary reason that the LTRU WG chose not to reference ISO 11179 in this draft had nothing to do with whether the WG considered ISO 11179 appropriate or valuable in general. Rather, it was that it was not deemed that reference to ISO 11179 would add significant value in the context of an IETF language subtag registry. Taken together, the ISO 11179 standards are long and complex, and have not to our knowledge been referenced in any other IETF metadata registry -- and certainly not in relation to RFC 1766 or RFC 3066, which specifications accomplish their purposes in spite of that absence of reference. Thus, when I see Mr. Morfin citing ISO 11179 in the course of arguing for some view that he holds, I consider that citation to have added nothing of significance in support of his view. > This means that this debate is only to lock a _final_ ABNF via an > accepted RFC and a loaded operationalIANA registry _before_ a simpler > solution [ISO 639-6] is available three months from now This statement makes several assumptions of uncertain validity, not the least of which is that use of alpha-4 symbols from ISO 639-6 for IETF language tags would constitute a simpler solution. Given the widespread existing use of RFC 3066 tags, use of ISO 639-6 would have to go alongside use
STD (was: Last Call: 'Tags for Identifying Languages'toBCP)
An exchange on WG-ltru documents (I do not say "support": the reader will judge) the positions I support. It involves: - Peter Constable: one of the initiator of the project and author of ISO 639-3 which lists 7500 languages and is used in building langtags - Doug Ewel: author of the Draft concerning the initial content of the registry - Debbie Garside: the author of ISO 639-6 At 22:20 28/08/2005, Peter Constable wrote: [I'll preface this reply by saying that we don't want to spend too much time discussing issues that are not of immediate concern while we've got the matching draft and IETF last call on the registry drafts to deal with. So, I won't pursue this thread much longer.] The proposed Draft is based upon ISO 639-1,2,3 lists of language names. ISO 639-6 is a list of language use names and IDs. The proposed langtag is an arbitrary limited compound of three information: language name, script and country. A language identification MAY call for far more elements, and deliver much more information. However these three basic elements are necessary to sell lingually related products (contract, ads, documentation, bills) and identify the current status of the art "locales" (CLDR project). The alternative seems to be: - GO for an e-commercial only multilingual internet, for ever. - NO we do not want the Multilingual Internet to be only commercial. The decision is NOW. And we understand Peter and the authors wants to win now, because they have real needs to address now. But I do not think there is a need for anyone to "win". There is a third response. - GO for an e-commercial multilingual internet support now, as default/immediate solution - YES to a generalised Multilingual Internet hooked to the RFC 3066 Draft how poor it is, using its reserved ABNF hooks. This means that: - "fr-Latn-fr" is the default tag based upon ISO 639-1/2/3 - "x-fran" is a private use tag based upon ISO 639-6 - "0-jefsey.com:franver" is my vision of the French at the Palace of Versailles. Documented by an ISO 11179 conformant system (see below) > From:Doug Ewell > I'm a bit surprised that a work characterized as a work-in-progress > and not yet ready for public review is nevertheless deemed ready > to be considered as a draft international standard. Debbie at no point said that it was -- and it is not. It will be December at the earliest that it can be registered as a CD, and it must successfully complete a three-month ballot as CD before it can be registered as a Draft International Standard. So last spring of 2006 at the earliest. This means that this debate is only to lock a _final_ ABNF via an accepted RFC and a loaded operationalIANA registry _before_ a simpler solution is available three months from now > > In other words, in the system as proposed, you could > > use either the alpha-4 representation or the unique DI to find the > > closest 639-1,-2,-3 or -5 tags should you so wish. > > But in language tags, either one value needs to be canonical -- sorry, > "preferred" -- over the others, or else the duplicative values should > not be added at all. Your statement doesn't contradict anything that Debbie has said, provided the context is ISO 639-6 alone. If we were to talk about incorporation of ISO 639-6 into a revision of RFC 3066, however, then duplication would become an issue for consideration. This is the WG-ltru Charter that all the ISO codes be included. As a user I am not much interested in mixing four formats only to please Peter Constable and/or Debbie Garside. All the more than the issue is the addition of the script information to document ... oral expression and they miss computer(ised?) languages (definition?) and all this is through computers. For clarification of Debbie's statement, in the model of ISO 11179, we have metadata elements that consist of a data element concept, such as 'English', and a representation for that, such as "en" or "eng" (these would be distinct representations belonging to different value domains). Within an metadata registry, a registry item corresponding to 'English' can have a Data Identifier (DI), which is a unique identifier *within the registry* for that administered item; in this example, that DI could be any number of strings, though "English" would be among the better choices. Nice to see that ISO 11179 is accepted now. Peter Constable and the WG-ltru have opposed the reference to ISO 11179 model. This model permits to conceptualise languages and to include in their description an unlimited number of additional elements. Roughly it means that ISO 639-3 is a table of codes (names) related to non documented languages. While ISO 639-6 wants to be a root to a base of objects describing languages. The Draft proposes a very limited version of that base with three columns only. This is enough in many cases. But not in an increasing number of cases. Hence the possibility to use the Draft as a default. Since the three ele
