On 09/05/2000 09:38:00 AM Michael Everson wrote:
>>Well, Michael, *something* has to happen. There are a significant number
of
>>users for whom the status quo isn't adequate.
>
>Come on, Peter. Which users are they and what languages do they need? Be
>specific.
The languages are all those listed in the Ethnologue. The current user base
for Ethnologue's codes includes:
SIL International
The Linguistics Data Consortium (850+ individual agencies)
The Linguist List (12,500+ members)
The Endangered Language Fund
UNESCO
and a number of other individuals and agencies.
>Are they candidates for encoding in ISO 639-2?
Many are *not* candidates for addition to ISO 639-2 specifically because
that standard imposes a requirement of 50+ published documents in the
language in question. That does not mean, however, that these languages do
not have a legitimate need for tags.
>That is how ISO 639 works, and
>RFC 1766 is an adjunct for that process, subordinate to it, and is not a
>fast-track for code adoption and circumventing the international standard.
But the discussion regarding revisions to RFC 1766 have specifically made
allowances for languages that don't satisfy the 50+ document requirement.
The two processes *are* different.
>There is a process
>for applying and approving codes there. You have to do the work.
We are quite prepared to. It would not be difficult to prepare as many
individual requests to IANA as we need; all the information we need is in
our database. But I wonder if this is what people on the IETF-languages
list want to deal with (would you want 100 requests a month for the next 5
years? 100 a day for the next 60 days?), and I question whether the result
would be in the best interest. As I said, Gary's and my paper discuss a
variety of issues, and we hope people will give serious consideration to
the issues we raise, and the solution we suggest, after I've presented the
paper.
>We are NOT
>going to adopt a thousand codes from a list of SIL codes, or any other
list
>of arbitrary codes.
They are not arbitrary, by any means.
>We are going to use the procedures. And you (or
>whoever) have to go to the trouble to do the work to get it done.
>
>>I don't want to start dumping
>>thousands of requests, and I hope it doesn't come to that.
>
>If you want a thousand codes, you have to make a thousand requests.
As I said, we can do that.
>If you
>want one code, you have to make one request. That is how ISO 639 works,
and
>RFC 1766 is an adjunct for that process, subordinate to it, and is not a
>fast-track for code adoption and circumventing the international standard.
>
>I don't think that I am being unreasonable. I'm just doing my job.
And I'm just doing mine, in response to the various people and agencies who
have been asking how to get from what ISO 639-2 and RFC 1766 currently do
provide to the much larger set of languages they are interested in.
- Peter
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Constable
Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485
E-mail: <peter_constable@sil.org>
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