Re: ISO 639-2 3-letter language codes and RFC 1766

By all means wait till the standard is approved.

I have not looked at the complete list of two columns but I would hope
that no code is used one way in one column and another way in the
other column.  That being the case (which I sure hope it is) then why
not eliminate the notion of columns and just allow synonyms so you can
use which ever one you know.  This removes the asymetry of special
treatment for English, e.g. it would allow the Germans to use an
abbreviation for the German name for a language.  The drawback is that
it may get hard to find unique synonyms with only three letters.  I
would rather allow more characters then I don't have to remember the
the code and could use the name of the language itself.  Codes are for
compression into databases, not for human interaction.

Received on Monday, 20 January 1997 10:11:06 UTC