From: Mark Davis
[mailto:mark.davis at icu-project.org]
Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2006
11:46 AM
To: Martin Hosken
Cc: Doug Ewell; LTRU Working Group
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Re: script tag
for IPA
I generally agree with Addison's
comments. A couple of further items.
1. Procedurally, the possibility of getting an IPA script variant is not zero.
It was proposed, there was very little discussion, and dismissed without a lot
of discussion (I'm just an observer). So if a more reasoned document is
presented there could be different results. Unlike other cases, it is not up to
one person capriciousness.
2. I think the private use codes (for script, etc) are misunderstood. If an
authority designates a code as private use code, that means that it is
recognized as a valid code, but that authority doesn't attach a meaning to it, and never will.
It does not mean that nobody else can attach a meaning to it -- if
that were the case it would be completely pointless to have private use codes.
For example, the Unicode Consortium defines a meaning for Qaai ( http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr24/).
Any application conformant to the Unicode Standard must interpret Qaai as
applied with that meaning. It also attaches meaning to certain private use tags
in CLDR (LDML), notably for some region codes:
|
QO
|
Outlying Oceania
|
|
QU
|
European Union
|
|
ZZ
|
Unknown or Invalid Territory
|
But it only takes part of the range: "The private use codes from
XA..XZ will never be used by CLDR, and are thus safe for use for other purposes
by applications using CLDR data".
It would be possible for RFC4646bis to define a range of private use codes that
it will use. This would need to be very carefully done, and we might decide
that it is not appropriate, but it is certainly a possibility.
Mark