RE: LDP WG response to i18n-ISSUE-410: Language tags should reference BCP 47

On Mar 27, 2015 6:25 PM, "Phillips, Addison" <addison@lab126.com> wrote:
>
> > From: Eric Prud'hommeaux [mailto:eric@w3.org]
> >
> > You'll note that it just follows the convention of RDF specs in 
referring to a
> > "languag tag", and not either the "Language-Tag" or "obs-language-tag"
> > productions. I read the difference as guidance to folks inventing e.g.
> > language tags for regional dialects, etc.  I'm not sure how much RDF 
falls into
> > that camp, rather than simply representing existing language tags. My
> > temptation is to stick with the convention so that one spec doesn't
> > apparently contradict another.
>
>
> BCP 47 provides for private use (as well as guidance for registering 
subtags necessary for language variations not represented by the standard 
language tag structure). Generally there is no benefit to inventing or 
using a completely separate language tagging scheme.
>
> The guidance in the WG comment regarding to use of obs-language-tag has 
to do with the fact that some of the RDF standards antedate the adoption of 
the current BCP47 set of RFCs and "obs-language-tag" represents the 
more-relaxed grammar used previously.
>
> I guess what you're saying is that, although the "optional language tag" 
should be a language tag, any string could appear there and it would not be 
a processing/parsing error if something that didn't follow BCP47 appeared 
there. Is that correct?

Right. Turtle Patch treats it as a string. Other stuff in the RDF stack 
would break if one didn't at least follow obs-language-tag (SPARQL a 
'-'-sensitive  langmatches function and probably some UIs crack the'-'s) 
but nothing would treat a rigorous LanguageTag differently from an 
obs-language-tag.


> Addison
>
> Addison Phillips
> Globalization Architect (Amazon Lab126)
> Chair (W3C I18N WG)
>
> Internationalization is not a feature.
> It is an architecture.
>
>