Re: New Article [URGENT]: Understanding the New Language Tags

Hello Richard,

A few nits and a few important comments:

Please changed the parentheses in the first sentence of the article to
something else, i.e.

     "Language tags are identifiers used in protocols or document formats
      to indicate the natural language of the content (or to express a
      user's preference for a specific language or set of languages)."
=>
     "Language tags are identifiers used in protocols or document formats
      to indicate the natural language of the content, or to express a
      user's preference for a specific language or set of languages."

This is important, because both uses are of equal importance.

"rival for importance" -> "rival in importance" (way more popular
on Google)


The following paragraph should be considered very carefully,
and fixed before publication (IMPORTANT!)

"There are few standards of interest to the globalization community that 
rival BCP 47 for importance. A revision to this standard is bound to 
provoke intense scrutiny and any major changes are bound to invite controversy."

We have had a fair share of controversy already; most of the stuff
is now well baked. I don't think it helps having a sentence like this,
because it doesn't help the article, and it isn't picked up later
in the article. If you want to tease the reader to read the rest of
the article, then write something like: The revision of this standard
led a lot of discussion over controversial points. These, as well
as what solution was taken and why, is explained below.
(the next sentence also has to be adapted somewhat)


Given that we only show the Author at the bottom, and in small print,
language like "With Mark Davis of IBM, I was an originator and editor
of the documents" should be tweaked, e.g. to read "With Mark Davis of
IBM, I (Addison Phillips) was an originator and editor of the documents"
(or some such).

There are way too many 'would's and 'might's.

Matching: "This work should be in IETF Last Call shortly after this
article is published.": Don't make predictions. State the current state.
When things change, change the article; on the Web, this is exteremely
easy.

Looking over the article as a whole, there definitely should be
something like a TOC or a paragraph explaining what will be
discussed. In print, it's easy to leaf through a couple pages
and pick up the headlines, but people don't do that on the web.
(IMPORTANT)

If these items can be fixed, this will be a nice article
providing very useful information.


Regards,    Martin.


At 20:25 06/05/12, Richard Ishida wrote:
 >
 >Chaps,
 >
 >I have obtained permission from MultiLingual Computing magazine and
 >Addision Phillips to republish an article that appeared in MLC's last edition.
 >
 >I have prepared the article at http://www.w3.org/International/articles/bcp47/
 >
 >Since it has already been published, I don't think it needs to go through
 >the normal review process.
 >
 >I propose to publish it on Monday, unless one of you raises any particular
 >objection.  If I don't hear from anyone by Monday morning I will go ahead.
 >
 >Cheers,
 >RI
 >
 >
 >============
 >Richard Ishida
 >Internationalization Lead
 >W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
 >
 >http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/
 >http://www.w3.org/International/
 >http://people.w3.org/rishida/blog/
 >http://www.flickr.com/photos/ishida/

Received on Monday, 15 May 2006 10:20:15 UTC