- From: Sue Ellen Wright <sellenwright@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:39:24 -0500
- To: "Bernard Vatant" <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>, "Gerhard Budin" <gerhard.budin@univie.ac.at>
- Cc: "Felix Sasaki" <fsasaki@w3.org>, "Addison Phillips" <addison@yahoo-inc.com>, "Mark Davis" <mark.davis@jtcsv.com>, "Thomas Baker" <baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de>, public-esw-thes@w3.org
- Message-ID: <e35499310612210939h5ea3b3e3v2bd1732e12518510@mail.gmail.com>
Hi, All, Indeed, I suspect that lots of people would be delighted if someone wants to go ahead with this for SKOS, provided that no one has already started such a project. Rather than searching for IANA, you want to reference IETF BCP 47, which will be your permanent ID reference for the Language Tags. My contacts on BCP 47 are Felix Sasaki, Addison Phillips, and Mark Davis, but as noted, they may possibly be off line right now, as many people are. On the ISO side, Gerhard Budin is the Chair of ISO TC 37/SC 2, whose WG 2 is responsible for the 639 family of standards. I know that he shares my view that any new initiatives in this area should be oriented toward the set of codes and the syntax rules contained in the current IETF RFC 4645, 4646 and 4647, taking into consideration any successor recommendations of the IETF. (There is, for instance, a current effort to update the recently approved RFCs to bring documents into compliance with the new ISO 639-3, which essentially identifies the SIL Ethnologue codes as the extended codes for comprehensive identification of languages. Also bear in mind (I probably said this in another email) that when it comes to xml:lang, we need to concern ourselves with langauge tags per IETF, not just language codes alone. Sorry I'm not coming up with the absolute final answer here, but sooner or later, one of the IETF guys will check his mail! Best regards Sue Ellen On 12/21/06, Bernard Vatant <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com> wrote: > > Sue Ellen > > I think you are absolutely right about this not being a significant > > task: the main issue is to get a variety of people from a number of > > communities of practice to agree on a single approach. > Sure enough. But at least we could help proposing at least one. :-) > > SKOS would certainly be one avenue. There may be others, and in the > > end, we may need more than one flavor in order to conform to > > requirements in a given environment, which is OK as long as we can map > > successfully back and forth. > Yes, this is a good use case for mapping, either SKOS-to-SKOS mapping, > or mapping from some RDF dialect to another. You know it's one of my > favourite topics. > > I'm hoping that sooner or later one of the guys for W3C will weigh > > into this discussion and let us know whether they are already > > addressing this issue. > I've been searching the W3C I18n Activity > http://www.w3.org/International/ which looks to me the place where such > things should happen, but it looks like at first sight there is no > connection between this activity and the SW activity. I will investigate > further. > > It's a bad time of year to hope to catch everybody monitoring their > > email! > Indeed. By the way, Happy Xmas to all :-) > > Bernard > > There will be an ISO TC 37 meeting in January where we'll be > > addressing issues regarding our own metadata registry, and this will > > surely come up. > > Best regards > > Sue Ellen > > > > On 12/21/06, *Bernard Vatant* <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com > > <mailto:bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>> wrote: > > > > Hi Sue Ellen > > > > Thanks for your insights. Do you have pointers to the discussions > you > > mention, and/or any contact with people taking part in them, and who > > would see some interest in RDF-ization of those resources? > (assuming > > such a class definition is satisfiable). > > Actually when one looks at > > http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry > > <http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry>, the > > technical > > task of migrating its content into RDF, as long as a relevant > > vocabulary > > is defined, is quite trivial. > > After that it's mainly a political issue. :-) > > But there is a point that has not been answered so far in my > original > > question. Would SKOS a relevant format for such a representation? > > > > Bernard > > > > > > Sue Ellen Wright a écrit : > > > Hi, All, > > > There's serious discussions going on concerning the IETF > > language tag > > > subtag registry and the ISO implementations of the 639 family of > > > codes, so I think it makes sense to coordinate any efforts in this > > > direction with the folks working on those two sets of standards. > > IETF > > > 4647 spells out means for matching codes, but it would make things > a > > > lot simpler if we have a more or less standard format for > > representing > > > them in rdf. > > > Bye for now > > > Sue Ellen > > > > > > > > > On 12/20/06, *Thomas Baker* <baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de > > <mailto:baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de> > > > <mailto:baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de > > <mailto:baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de> >> wrote: > > > > > > > > > On Mon, Dec 18, 2006 at 06:54:18PM +0100, Bernard Vatant > wrote: > > > > ISO-639 languages are used in XML and in RDF, and in SKOS, > via > > > their > > > > code used as value of xml:lang attribute. > > > > But for various applications, it would be interesting to > > define > > > those > > > > languages as proper RDF resources. > > > > > > > > So far, the only attempt to do so I've found in RDF is > > > > http://downlode.org/rdf/iso-639/ and the description it > > provides is > > > > quite basic. > > > ... > > > > > > > So, we have public concepts, a lot of data to mine, we > > have use > > > cases, > > > > all we need is a namespace to which append ISO 639 codes to > > > forge URIs. > > > > Who is likely to host and maintain that namespace? > > > > http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/language# > > > <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/language#> ? > > > > http://purl.org/dc/language/ <http://purl.org/dc/language/ > > ? > > > ... > > > > Since I think we can wait for quite a while before ISO > > delivers > > > such a > > > > thing in its own namespace - and I would be happy to be > proven > > > wrong > > > > here - I wonder what kind of initiative could move this > thing > > > forward. > > > > Is it in DCMI intention to define those instances in its own > > > namespace > > > > (Tom, any clues on that?). > > > > > > Well, I agree with the need :-) > > > > > > Several years ago, we considered opening a DCMI service for > the > > > "registration" of URIs identifying controlled vocabularies for > > > use as encoding schemes in metadata. While the demand for > such > > > a service was clear, the project did not look maintainable, > > > sustainable, and scalable. > > > > > > Unless URIs are coined "once and for all" and "with no > > > guarantees" (and how useful is that?), it is not clear > > > how such a namespace host should operate over time. The > > > impulse to "just do it" comes up against hard questions. > > > Even just maintaining URIs for entities in a separately > > > maintained ISO standard would involve a significant > commitment. > > > > > > Tom > > > > > > -- > > > Tom Baker - tbaker@tbaker.de <mailto:tbaker@tbaker.de> > > <mailto:tbaker@tbaker.de <mailto:tbaker@tbaker.de>> - > > > baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de > > <mailto:baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de> <mailto: > > baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de <mailto:baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de>> > > > > > > <mailto:sewright@neo.rr.com> > > > <http://mondeca.wordpress.com/> > > -- Sue Ellen Wright Institute for Applied Linguistics Kent State University Kent OH 44242 USA sellenwright@gmail.com swright@kent.edu sewright@neo.rr.com
Received on Thursday, 21 December 2006 17:39:53 UTC