Fwd: Information about latest specs for language tagging

Hi,

I don't know if we will end up referencing country codes in one of our APIs, but in case we do this is the latest and greatest info on the topic.

Begin forwarded message:
> Resent-From: chairs@w3.org
> From: "Richard Ishida" <ishida@w3.org>
> Date: March 1, 2010 15:53:20 GMT+01:00
> To: <chairs@w3.org>
> Subject: Information about latest specs for language tagging
> archived-at: <http://www.w3.org/mid/001a01cab94e$ef3eac10$cdbc0430$@org>
> 
> Dear Chairs,
> 
> It seems that a number of people are unaware of recent changes with regards to language tagging specifications. As it is important to use the right reference for spec development, I hope the following information will prove useful.
> 
> You used to specify a language tag using RFC 1766, and then RFC 3066, both of which referred you to a list of ISO codes for language subtags and another ISO list for country names.
> 
> RFC 3066 was replaced by two RFCs:  4646 (Tags for Identifying Languages) and 4647 (Matching of Language Tags).  These two RFCs were concatenated at a single location under the name BCP 47. It is intended that BCP 47 will be an unchanging name with a single, unchanging URI that gives access to the most up-to-date RFCs as they are developed.  This is particularly helpful since it is not clear from reading RFC the itself that it has been obsoleted. 
> 
> In September 2009, RFC 4646 was obsoleted by RFC 5646 (but RFC 4647 remains current).  RFCs 5646 and 4647 are still referred to as BCP 47, and BCP 47 is accessed via the same URI as before.
> 
> The latest specifications for language tagging allow a number of different types of subtag, over and above language and country/region, and point you to the IANA Language Subtag Registry (rather than ISO code lists) to find the (almost 8,000) subtags which are now available for use.
> 
> Any language tags constructed using the obsoleted RFCs are still valid according to the syntax of the latest incarnation of BCP 47, though some tags are now deprecated.
> 
> 
> We recommend that you currently use the following reference for language tag syntax.
> [BCP47]
>    Tags for Identifying Languages, A. Phillips and M. Davis, Editors, September 2009. 
>    Available at http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/bcp/bcp47.txt
> 
> The following additional links may be useful for further reading:
> IANA Language Subtag Registry		http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry 
> Language tags in HTML and XML	http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/
> Choosing a Language Tag		http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-choosing-language-tags
> Language Subtag Lookup tool		http://rishida.net/utils/subtags/
> 
> If you have further questions about language tags, please contact the i18n WG.
> 
> Hope that helps,
> RI
> 
> ============
> Richard Ishida
> Internationalization Lead
> W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
> 
> http://www.w3.org/International/
> http://rishida.net/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

--
Robin Berjon
  robineko — hired gun, higher standards
  http://robineko.com/

Received on Monday, 1 March 2010 16:43:57 UTC