RE: Questions re ISO-639-1,2,3

From: Donald Z. Osborn (dzo@bisharat.net)
Date: Sun Aug 21 2005 - 20:32:17 CDT

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    To my question last month re ISO-639, there were a number of helpful replies -
    thanks. Among the comments, Peter and Doug both rightly pointed me to the sites
    of the agencies officially responsible for the official lists: Library of
    Congress for ISO-639-1&2, and SIL for ISO/DIS-639-3 (but not necessarily 1&2,
    so I learned to my embarassment).

    A follow up question is whether it would be possible for these agencies to
    provide something like a "raw database feed" (assuming such a complex
    syndication is possible) that would permit other organizations to incorprate
    accurate (and automatically updated, though that would not be often)
    information on their sites with the look and feel of their site.

    This question arises because someone is looking to post the lists of ISO-639
    codes on a new site for localization developers, and I don't think the
    alternative of just providing a pointer to the LOC site is attractive.

    Thanks for your patience with these questions.

    Don Osborn
    Bisharat.net

    Quoting Peter Constable <petercon@microsoft.com>:

    ...
    >
    > <rant>
    > Several sites have published lists of ISO 639 language identifiers,
    > rather than simply providing a link to the official site. While this is
    > thought to be helpful, it is extremely unhelpful in that errors get
    > introduced or the information gets out of date. Anyone that has done
    > this is strongly advised to delete their private list and replace it
    > with a pointer to the official site:
    > http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/iso639jac.html
    > </rant>
    >
    ...



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