Re: i18n-ISSUE-214: Improper use of languageCode

On Fri, Sep 2, 2016 at 5:35 AM, Martin J. Dürst <duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp <mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp>> wrote:

That's where the language code comes into play. Language codes like "ja-JP"
uses the national addressing format in Japan: big endian. Language codes
like "en" or "ja-Latn" use international addressing format in Japan: little
endian.

This makes sense at first sight, but is quite ad-hoc. It's totally unclear what "language code" other conventions would use. Also, "ja-Latn" says "Japanese language, written with Latin script", but what you really want to identify is "Japanese (country!) format, when using Latin script". So you would need a country and a script, but not a language. That's not exactly what language codes provide.

Exactly so.  What is more, no tagging is needed to determine if an address in Japan is in Latin script or not: that can be determined by inspection of the content.  I'm all for BCP 47 language tags, but they are meant for specifying languages, not national conventions independent of language.  Similarly, if I had a field in a contract document for "governing law", I wouldn't use a language tag there, but an ISO 3166 country code, with ISO 3166-2 subtags in the case of federations with multiple legal systems.

--
John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan <http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan>        cowan@ccil.org <mailto:cowan@ccil.org>
Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos        --Lithuanian proverb
Deus dedit dentes; deus dabit panem           --Latin version thereof
Deity donated dentition;
  deity'll donate doughnuts                   --English version by Muke Tever
God gave gums; God'll give granary            --Version by Mat McVeagh