- From: <Peter_Constable@sil.org>
- Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 17:52:06 -0500
- To: Unicoders <unicode@unicode.org>, WWW International <www-international@w3.org>
On 09/28/2002 04:47:49 AM tiro wrote: >'Language system' (not 'language') in the OpenType specification actually means >*writing* system, i.e. a particular set of orthographic/typographic conventions >associated with the use of a particular script. 'Language system' is a >misnomer -- an historical artifact of the incomplete understanding of the >format's original designers --, and it has caused all sorts of confusion, >especially among people who assume that the OT 'language system' tags must have >some relationship to things like NLS tags. There is no necessary relationship >and, indeed, it is possible to conceive of a user wanting to apply, for >instance, the typographic conventions of German to a language other than German. But should there not be some (possibly user-overridable) relationship between an NLS or similar tag (e.g. "lang" in HTML or xml:lang) and one of these so that a browser or word-processing app that knows what "language" (e.g. what RFC 3066 tag) is applied to the data can tell the layout/rendering sub-system what OT "language-system" tags to apply (assuming some API exists to do so)? Surely that is where we want to move toward. - Peter --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Constable Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International 7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA Tel: +1 972 708 7485 E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>
Received on Saturday, 28 September 2002 19:33:33 UTC