Re: Information about latest specs for language tagging

Hi Art,
Thanks for forwarding this. I've added P&C with the new BCP47
reference. I've also removed the reference to the obsolete RFC 4647
(P&C now links to RFC5646).

Kind regards,
Marcos

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 4:04 PM, Arthur Barstow <art.barstow@nokia.com> wrote:
> Editors, All - FYI, some information from the I18N group re normative
> reference for language tags.
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: ext Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org>
> Date: March 1, 2010 9:53:20 AM EST
> Subject: Information about latest specs for language tagging
> 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/
>
>



-- 
Marcos Caceres
http://datadriven.com.au

Received on Wednesday, 3 March 2010 11:51:19 UTC