Re: Language ranges with more than two sub-tag

Hello Marcos,

There are certainly language tags with more than two sub-tags. 
zh-Hant-HK (traditional Chinese as used in Hong Kong) would be an 
example. CLDR (cldr.unicode.org) and/or LDML 
(www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/) definitely use these for fallbacks in a 
way similar to what you write about.

I'm sure that you will get some more detailed feedback on this list in 
the next few hours/days; if not, please write to ietf-languages@iana.org 
or ltru@ietf.org, and you will definitely get more information and pointers.

It would be great if the SysApp's working group would reuse existing and 
well-tested mechanisms rather than invent something on their own, but I 
guess that's why you are writing to us.

Regards,   Martin.

On 2013/03/01 17:47, Marcos Caceres wrote:
> Hi Internationalization WG,
>
> Quick question: how common are language ranges with more than two sub-tags (as used in user agents on the Web)? I'm wondering what the particular locales (language, countries, regions) are where these ranges are commonly used (if any)?
>
> I've been through "Setting language preferences in a browser" [1], which only speaks of language ranges that contain two sub tags. I've also tried doing my own testing on various user agents and system settings can can only find the "language-COUNTRY" convention, but not any with three sub tags.
>
> The reason for the question is that the SysApp's working group is currently working on a manifest format for web applications (based on the upcoming Firefox OS), and it needs to define an internationalization model. Firefox OS currently checks for localised content based on a complete language range (e.g., "en-US") and, if it can't find any matching content, it simply takes the language part of the language range (i.e., "en") and uses that to try to find matching content. This means that if there are any commonly used language ranges with three or more sub tags, matching could potentially be done incorrectly.
>
> See [2] for a list of use cases/examples.
>
> Kind regards,
> Marcos
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-lang-priorities.en.php
> [2] https://gist.github.com/marcoscaceres/5055717

Received on Friday, 1 March 2013 09:32:58 UTC