Re: Common Locale Data Repository Project

From: Mark Davis (mark.davis@jtcsv.com)
Date: Sat Apr 24 2004 - 20:01:43 EDT

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    comments below.

    Mark
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    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Peter Constable" <petercon@microsoft.com>
    To: "Unicode List" <unicode@unicode.org>
    Sent: Sat, 2004 Apr 24 06:12
    Subject: RE: Common Locale Data Repository Project

    > > From: Mark Davis [mailto:mark.davis@jtcsv.com]
    >
    >
    > > You can reiterate it all you want; in practice, 3066 tags are used as
    > > locale
    > > identifiers. And for a narrow sense of locales, that is perfectly
    > > reasonable.
    > > For a broad sense of "locale", including timezone, user's currency,
    > > religious
    > > preference, etc., it clearly would not be reasonable, and I would
    > agree
    > > with you
    > > for that.
    >
    > But there are a lot of people that don't know enough to recognize that
    > difference. So, even though a language identifier may be sufficient in
    > many cases to name a locale, it is IMO very unhelpful to refer to RFC
    > 3066 tags as locale identifiers as it perpetuates and leads people into
    > wrong assumptions. Please help improve common understanding by not
    > referring to them as locale IDs.

    I disagree. There is, as I have said, a perfectly reasonable, narrow sense of
    locale which is essentially identical to what is captured by RFC 3066. And in
    practice, RFC 3066 is often used with that meaning. I don't see any need to deny
    reality (at least not in this area ;-)

    As I said before, for a broader sense of "locale", RFC 3066 is not sufficient to
    capture everything that anyone has meant by that term.

    >
    >
    >
    > > >ISO 639 is not unstable. It is an open code set that is being added
    > to
    > > over time, but I don't think that should be referred to as unstable --
    > > that term suggests other things.
    > >
    > > ISO 3066 has *demonstrated* instability,
    >
    > I take it you mean ISO 3166? I did not make any claim in that regard.

    My typo: I meant ISO 3166.

    >
    >
    > > However, there is no policy documented
    > > *anywhere* that
    > > says they won't.
    >
    > I'm working on it. The ISO 639/RA-JAC has acknowledged the need for
    > stability. Getting into the normative text of the standards takes a
    > little time.

    That's great -- any way we can help with that?

    >
    >
    > Peter Constable
    >
    >



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