Re: [geolang-comment] what is a language

[Murray Altheim <m.altheim@open.ac.uk>]

Bandholtz, Thomas wrote:

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Murray Altheim [mailto:m.altheim@open.ac.uk]
>>
> ...
> 
>>I agree entirely, as I don't see Northern Sierra Miwuk on the ISO
>>list and have some friends who speak it (and Pomo, too). But it's
>>not within the scope of *this* TC to do that, merely to provide
>>the methodology so that other people (perhaps more appropriate
>>bodies than OASIS) to do so. Let them step into the snakepit, not
>>us. 
> 
> I agree entirely, thou I am not that much afraid of only snakepit :-)


I'm not personally either, but neither you nor I can speak or act
for OASIS in this regard, IMO.


>>If we can convince the SIL to provide a PSI set for all of
>>their languages, that would be great! In fact, I personally would
>>offer to do the work (you can pass that along) if they don't have
>>someone on staff to do it and they're willing to commit someone's
>>time to working with me. We could very likely automate it.
> 
> Great! Let's go. 
> We should contact them in charge of the complete TC, agreed? 


No, I'm happy to have you and/or I approach them as individuals, or
even as *members* of the TC, but not as representatives of the TC.
I don't think this should become an official action of the TC nor
necessarily even publicly endorsed by it, even if some of us might
agree with SIL's approach. There's many, many, interesting and
valuable PSI sets to be published, and I think the TC should focus
on how to publish, not take on the actual task of publication.

But yes, if you are willing to approach them in this regard, let's
go. I've got both the 14th edition and the latest update of the SIL
language and country code tables and can convert them into LTM in
short order, though I'm not sure what the final XTM should look
like (the TC hasn't determined that yet), which is one of the
reasons I've not already created these topic maps.

There'd be that first order of TC business (ie., figuring out what
"publication" really means both technically and logistically), then
trying to work with SIL on what they'd want to do with the topic
map(s) once they're done, and then how to keep things up to date.

I could write a ksh script to convert their language tables into
LTM, then someone at SIL could keep a copy of Ceryle handy to do
the conversion. I'm sure they'd prefer to be self-sufficient.
I'll likely have a public version of Ceryle ready by the time
they're ready to work with it (it works on either command line or
GUI).

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                  <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/>
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK

      In the evening
      The rice leaves in the garden
      Rustle in the autumn wind
      That blows through my reed hut.  -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu