Language markup tutorial

Richard asked me for comments on the following:

Registering codes with IANA is better than using user-defined codes,
since it maximises the likelihood of interoperability because the IANA
codes are visible to others. On the other hand, IANA tags are deprecated
as new codes are added to the ISO standard. Deprecated IANA tags include
no-bok (Norwegian "Book language" - use ISO 639 nb), i-navajo
(Navajo - use ISO 639 nv), i-lux (Luxembourgish - use ISO 639 lb),
and others. For this reason, IANA registration should only be seen
as a temporary fix in the absence of ISO codes.


I think the following should be changed:

"IANA tags are deprecated as new codes are added to the ISO standard."
->
"IANA tags have been deprecated when corresponding codes were added to
the ISO standard."

I don't think the following is appropriate:
"IANA registration should only be seen as a temporary fix in the
absence of ISO codes."
There are IANA codes that will probably last quite long, others not.
This is difficult to predict. I think something like "If you use
IANA-registered tags, please be aware that they may be deprecated
some time in the future in case a corresponding ISO code is registered."
Or because this is already said earlier, just leave this sentence out.

Some other comments:

"email submission process": I think this might create the wrong
impression that you can just submit proposals by email.

I would also make the distinction between i- tags and other
registered tags clearer, e.g. like this:
IANA registered tags can be of two forms: Primary languages
(in which case the tag is started with i- to avoid confusion
with ...) and sublanguages.


Regards,   Martin.

Received on Wednesday, 17 March 2004 11:55:26 UTC