2011/8/31 Doug Ewell <[email protected]>: > Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote: > >>> That would be extending the use of ISO 639 beyond identification of >>> languages. >> >> Nothing is extended, there already exists private-use codes in ISO 639 >> (e.g. qaa-qtz). > > Extending conceptually, not architecturally. Yes, the architecture of > 639 allows for private-use code elements, but they aren't supposed to be > used for things that 639 itself wouldn't be used for.
There's also another solution (that does not break much the existing BCP 47 implementations, but that would limit the may-be future extension of ISO 639 to longer codes): ISO 639 could immediately say that it will never allocate any language code (of any length) starting by qa..qz. In that case you don't even need a "q" singleton, for BCP 47. You could use the cumfortable space of any sequence of letters following the existing qa..qt letters already asssigned for local use (under private agreement). (Note that qa..qt in ISO 639 should be considered distinct from qaa..qtz; there's no bijective equivalence, i.e. aliasing, unless some private use applications want to partially define some equivalences, so such private equivalence mapping or private aliasing scheme will never be completely bijective over the whole qaa..qtz space). -- Philippe.
