On citation of RFCs / BCPs

Hi all,

As part of my review of EMMA, see
http://www.w3.org/International/2005/10/emma-review.html
I made a comment on references to BCPs (best common practice) rather than
RFCs (Request for comments), see comment 2:

RFC 1766 is obsoleted by 3066 (Tags for the Identification of Languages).
What is essential here is the reference to a BCP (best common practice),
which is for language identification BCP 47. Currenlty bcp 47 is
represented by RFC 3066, so could you change the reference to "IETF BCP
47, currently represented by RFC 3066"?

The background here is that there are currenlty two rfc numbers for "Tags
for the Identification of Languages" (1766, 3066). The draft of rfc
3066bis which has now been approved by the IESG will have a third number.
In the i18n core wg, we thought that to avoid the need to update specs
which just want to refer to "Tags for the Identification of Languages", we
should recommend them to cite BCP 47, which will 'always' have language
identification as its topic.

Although this originated in the rfc 3066(bis) discussion, I think it is a
general question of how to refer to RFCs / BCPs. This disussion started on  
the w3t-arch list, but Dan Connolly suggested to discuss this also on  
these lists here. Any comments / opinions?

Best,

Felix

Received on Monday, 31 October 2005 08:55:47 UTC