From: Mark E. Shoulson (mark@kli.org)
Date: Tue Sep 12 2006 - 07:23:17 CDT
Doug Ewell wrote:
> Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote:
>
>>> Please read the deeper explanation of this at the official ISO 639-3
>>> Web site, and then read RFC 4646 again, and come back when you are
>>> more familiar with the underlying concepts.
>>
>> You didnot need to explain that, I know all that. I don't see why you
>> want to contradict me there, given that I just said I was surprised
>> to see that ISO 4646 provisions are made for future (unknown)
>> extensions of ISO 639 (with 4-letter codes, but there's not been any
>> work or draft there for such codes), but no provision at all for
>> 3-letter codes that will soon be introduced by ISO 639-3. Instead,
>> ISO 4646 just speaks about the existing SIL codes (different from
>> those in the ISO 639-3 draft) and puts them in the private-use "x-*"
>> subtags (and I don't think that ISO 639-3 will be made to be in
>> private use).
(and so on...)
I think the question here (at least the question *I* have here), is that
if and when ISO 4646 is made to include ISO 639-3, given that ISO 639-3
and ISO 639-2 both use 3-letter codes, how will it be possible to
distinguish whether a 639-2 or a 639-3 code is being used? Unless all
of the 639-2 codes are subsumed into 639-3 (i.e. no one code has
incompatible meanings under the two standards). And in that case, is
639-2 "deprecated" because 639-3 says everything it says, and more?
This is such a simple question I feel stupid for asking it; surely this
has been thought of and quickly dispensed with by the committees.
~mark
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