On 2002.10.21 13:04 David Chart wrote: > > The problem with historical languages is that you need to specify a time > as well. For example, en-GB-1600 is rather different from en-GB-2002 > (have a look at Shakespeare). A dictionary based on a renaissance > mathematician is one historical slice of Latin, and different from > la-GB-1400, as well as from la-IT-1100. > > Until ISO get this sorted out, which I suppose might happen, I suggest > that we avoid using kludges to handle dead languages and historical > versions of living languages. > > (Although the ability to set my locale to en-GB-1600 would be rather > cool -- 'Thou hast changed thy document. Dost thou wish to retain thy > changes on disk?') > > -- > David Chart > http://www.dchart.demon.co.uk/
The mass complexity of languages, be as organic as they are, still results in many problems. Language, Locale, Dialect, Subvariant and Age are all necessary. If SIL International has a set of public standards for breakdown (other than the anthropology section), it would probably be more beneficial to move to SIL, despite risk of non-compliance to ISO. Either that, or we send Andrew to some of these barely-existent meetings and see if we get anything out of it. -Zen
