From: Debbie Garside (debbie@ictmarketing.co.uk)
Date: Wed Sep 13 2006 - 13:34:58 CDT
Philippe wrote: 
> At some future time, the two competing standards will 
> diverge, unless new policies are adopted in ISO 639 (and ISO 
> 3166 as well) that will also respect the RFC 4646 stability 
> rules; this would require an agreement between the (private) 
> IETF/IESG working group and related (half-public and 
> official, government-supported) ISO working groups. For now, 
> given the existing writers of this RFC suite, there's little 
> risk, given that they are already working with other ISO 
> standard bodies.
The ISO 639 family of standards do not compete.  They co-exist for different
purposes and the whole is managed for stability by the JAC which includes
members from both TC37 and TC46.  There are a number of members of the
JAC/TC37/TC46 who are also active on the IETF-languages and LTRU forums
although no formal liaison has been established (as far as I am aware).  
Best regards
Debbie Garside
> -----Original Message-----
> From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org 
> [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Philippe Verdy
> Sent: 12 September 2006 19:16
> To: Addison Phillips; Mark E. Shoulson
> Cc: Doug Ewell; Unicode Mailing List; UnicoRe Mailing List
> Subject: Re: New RFC 4645-4647 (language tags)
> 
> From: "Addison Phillips" <addison@yahoo-inc.com>
> > It's pretty simple, actually. ISO 639-3 and ISO 639-2 share 
> a codespace. 
> > That is, if you see a code 'xyz' in ISO 639-2, it will have exactly 
> > the same meaning in ISO 639-3. If you see a code 'xyz' in 
> ISO 639-3, 
> > if it is assigned (or becomes assigned) in ISO 639-2 it will have 
> > exactly the same meaning.
> > 
> > No language will have two codes assigned in the registry. 
> Users will, 
> > presumably, choose the code that best meets their needs.
> 
> How will they be able to choose if there's only one code in 
> the registry? Through the registered replacements and the 
> language tag canonicalisation described in RFC 4646? When I 
> read the reply from Doug, it seems that one of the code needs 
> to be registered in the IANA registry, otherwise, neither can 
> be used (even if they are in some part of ISO 639).
> 
> So the IANA registry becomes the only reference for language 
> tags, and it serves another purpose than ISO 639: code 
> stability in IANA with RFC 4646 (even if one code is weak), 
> instead of currentness and completeness if possible with ISO 
> 639 (even if ISO codes have been changed and reassigned, 
> something that's nearly impossible to track in applications 
> with the current ISO 639 standard).
> 
> At some future time, the two competing standards will 
> diverge, unless new policies are adopted in ISO 639 (and ISO 
> 3166 as well) that will also respect the RFC 4646 stability 
> rules; this would require an agreement between the (private) 
> IETF/IESG working group and related (half-public and 
> official, government-supported) ISO working groups. For now, 
> given the existing writers of this RFC suite, there's little 
> risk, given that they are already working with other ISO 
> standard bodies.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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