From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sun Feb 01 2009 - 00:02:05 CST
> [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] De la part de Doug Ewell
> Envoyé : samedi 31 janvier 2009 18:48
> À : Unicode Mailing List
> Objet : Re: Error on Language Codes page.
>
>
> Christopher Fynn <cfynn at gmx dot net> wrote:
>
> > There is an error in the table of language codes page at
> > <http://unicode.org/onlinedat/languages.html>
> > "Language Codes: ISO 639, Microsoft and Macintosh"
>
> That page continues to trouble me, because of its
> recommendation to use ISO 639-1 codes for Hebrew, Indonesian,
> and Yiddish that were withdrawn from that standard 20 years ago.
These three casesv are not a problem: did you note the asterisk after these
codes: they are also present in ISO 639, and mean deprecated codes. The HTML
page above correctly gives the current recommanded codes (the other codes
with the asterisk are non recommended coded, that are still implicitly
aliases that may be supported as they have still not be reassigned to other
languages; anyway, there will probably be no more alpha-2 code assigned in
any part of ISO 639, so even if thoise aliases are not recommended, they are
still usable by applications that still use them for legacy reasons: Java
for example still supports "iw" internally).
The problem with "Bhutani vs. Dzongkha" is more serious: effectively "dz"
designates dzongkha only, one of the languages used in Bhutan. But Dzonhgkha
is often incorrectly refered to as "Buthani" in some references. Given that
the term "Bhutani" only occurs on this HTML page in the "Language" column
which is n,ot referencing any standard but indicates the name defined and
displayed by Unicode itself (but without being a standard name, because
Unicode does not standardize the languages!), I think that the simple
correction to this page is to change "Buthani" into "Dzongkha", and not
change the rest of the line (codes used in ISO 639 standards and
system-specific UI codes on Windows or Mac platforms...)
You may add a separate line for "Buthani" (ISO 639-2/3: "bcc"), if it is
supported in Windows or Mac to exhibit their specific UI codes on these
platforms. However I don't think that this page has been updated since long.
There are many more language UI codes at least on the Windows platforms,
that are not in this page (it is missing many that exist at least since
Windows 2000, or some additional service packs or newly supported MUI, as
well as almost all those that were added in XP, Server 2003, and now in
Seven Beta. (Many UI codes have been added since 2002 by Microsoft or Apple,
as well as in the ISO 639 standard itself for general use language codes
that are distinct from language UI codes, that do not directly encode
languages but locales for these platforms...)
The actual reference for these UI codes should be the reference pages from
Microsoft (Dr Internationaln now part of MSDN) and Apple (Developer
resources), or downloadable system resource kits for developers on these
systems. Idon't think it's not the role of Unicode to standardize and
support those system-specific codes, for the same reason that it does not
standardize as well the ISO 639 language codes (and their listed names).
This page can only be a unsupported technical note, for information only but
not usable as a reference.
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