RFC 1766 language tags

From: Misha Wolf (misha.wolf@reuters.com)
Date: Fri Jun 13 1997 - 11:27:20 EDT


Harald Alvestrand wrote:

> When ISO's finished its processing of ISO 639-2 (the 3-letter codes)
> to full IS, I fully intend to update RFC 1766 with a reference to this
> document, so that 3-letter language tags can be used.
...

When updating RFC 1766 for the ISO 639-2 three-letter codes, you may
wish also to consider the following modifications, relevant to HTML,
HTTP, CSS and the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative):

1. Define the interpretation of multi-part language tags (eg en-us)
   to be hierarchical, as specified in RFC 2070. Note that RFC 2070
   is being incorporated in Cougar, the next version of HTML.

2. Provide codes for language-not-known and for no-language. These
   requirements were raised at recent meetings of W3C's HTML WG and
   CSS WG. They are needed because HTML has adopted the hierarchical
   language tagging model of RFC 2070, eg:

      <p lang="fr">French text<span lang="de">German text</span>French
      text</p>

   If the middle portion is in no-language (or in language-not-known),
   one needs to be able to say, eg:

      <p lang="fr">French text<span lang="$$$">%^&*@#</span>French
      text</p>

   where $$$ stands for a code meaning no-language (or language-not-
   known).

Thanks,
Misha

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