Same language, two locales (RE: Locale string for Norwegian - Bok mal and Nynorsk?)

From: Marco.Cimarosti@icl.com
Date: Thu Aug 31 2000 - 13:52:43 EDT


Addison P. Phillips wrote:
> This is a weakness of the locale model used on the Web and most UNIX
> systems: the hierarchy is based on the ISO 639 language codes
> and the ISO 3166 country codes. It doesn't cover such minutiae as
> "inside-a-country" variation easily nor does it deal well with subtle
> issues like this.

This may be even more serious when such sub-locales have an impact on
display.

It is the case of Malayalam, that has two typographical styles
("traditional" and a "reformed") which are both in current use.

For instance, the Open Type specs for Indic scripts
(http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/indicot/default.htm), in
Appendix A (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otspec/indicot/appen.htm)
defines the two different styles:

        "MAL " Malayalam (Old Style)
        "MLR " Malayalam (Reformed)

But there is not much use to it until it will be possible to tag the text
correspondingly (e.g. ml-OLD ml-NEW).

_ Marco



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