RE: New article published: Understanding the New Language Tags

Hi John,

Thanks for these comment.  We have an article "Language tags in HTML and
XML"[1] that gives a simple introduction to RFC 3066 and how to use it.  I
was thinking that we would replace that with a similar article about using
RFC 3066bis (and change all the index pointers), but not until just before
the latter is actually released (to avoid confusion, since many people just
want to be told what to do with the least amount of figuring out possible).
The article published today is more of a heads up for those who really want
to know, but I expect other work to be necessary.

We also encourage people to use the RFC in various places - see, for
example, the techniques index under "Choosing language values"[2] and the
best practises document on language declaration[3].  (These will need to be
changed to point to information on RFC 3066bis when the time is right.)

Are these the sorts of thing you were thinking of?

Cheers,
RI


[1] http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/
[2] http://www.w3.org/International/techniques/language#langvalues
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/i18n-html-tech-lang/#ri20030218.131140352

============
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/
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan@ccil.org] 
> Sent: 15 May 2006 14:50
> To: Richard Ishida
> Cc: www-international@w3.org
> Subject: Re: New article published: Understanding the New 
> Language Tags
> 
> Richard Ishida scripsit:
> 
> > The GEO Working Group has published the article:
> > 
> > 	Understanding the New Language Tags
> > 	http://www.w3.org/International/articles/bcp47/
> > 	By Addison Phillips, Yahoo!
> 
> While this article is certainly correct as to facts (it 
> should be), I fear that it will miss most of the target 
> audience.  Very few people are familiar with even what RFC 
> 1766 provides, much less RFC 3066; I saw a published database 
> schema recently -- I forget just where, or I'd have sent a 
> correction -- that allocated a
> CHAR(5) field for language tags!
> 
> Someone (sorry, I'm not volunteering -- I'm too close to the
> problem) needs to write an article thoroughly clearing away 
> the profound ignorance and misunderstanding that surrounds 
> the whole subject if the capabilities of RFC 3066bis are to 
> be truly useful.
> 
> -- 
> Where the wombat has walked,            John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
> it will inevitably walk again.          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
>

Received on Monday, 15 May 2006 14:16:26 UTC