Re: [geolang-comment] New PSI set draft

[Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@garshol.priv.no>]

* Lars Marius Garshol
|
|  - What to do about 'mul' and 'und'? Are these instances of any
|    class? Should we include them at all?

* Steve Pepper
| 
| I thought we agreed to include them but not make them instances of
| any class. That's what the minutes say at least.

So you expect me to read the minutes? That's asking a bit much, I
think.

Well, OK, let's consider this one settled. :)
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
|  - What to do about the metadata in parentheses following each
|    language? Should those be part of the base name in the XTM, or
|    should they be moved to an internal occurrence of some sort?
 
* Steve Pepper
|
| Following each language or following some languages? Not quite sure
| what metadata you are referring to.

Here are some examples:

  English, Old (ca.450-1100)
  Batak (Indonesia)
  Slave (Athapascan)
  Dutch, Middle (ca. 1050-1350)
  Egyptian (Ancient)
  Interlingua (International Auxiliary Language Association)

There seem to be three kinds of annotations:

 - (Other), to indicate that the code is a collective code,

 - time ranges, to indicate the boundaries in time between different
   variants of the same language, and

 - annotations that give the origin of the language (whether as a
   location or as an organizational entity).

I think the first and last kinds of annotations should stay as they
are, since they make some kind of sense as part of the names. What
bothers me more is the time ranges. They should clearly be kept, as
they are part of the source standard, but are they really part of the
names?

* Lars Marius Garshol
|
|  - What to do about the cases where multiple names are separated by
|    semicolons? Should we keep it as one base name, or split into
|    multiple base names? Should there be any scopes on the names?
 
* Steve Pepper
|
| Since we are translating, not interpreting, we must not change the
| meaning of anything. I would keep the names exactly as they are. As
| to scopes, there should only be 'eng' and 'fra'.

I agree with the principle, but I'm not sure its application here is
correct. Are you sure we are not changing anything by pretending that

  Nyanja; Chichewa; Chewa

is a single name?

I've read through the text of the standard itself and it offers no
guidance on how to interpret this.
 
* Lars Marius Garshol
|
|  - Need a change policy, plus an update policy. This is the biggest
|    issue, and one that could keep us busy for a while. There has been
|    one change to ISO 639 since the previous draft.
 
* Steve Pepper
|
| This issue should have its own thread... (Perhaps you would care to
| start it once these other issues have been ironed out?)

I think I will hand this one over to the interim chair. The other
issues clearly belong as part of finishing up the first two proposals,
whereas this one goes beyond that.
 
| I would change the 2nd sentence of the Warning from
| 
|     Please note that this page is not published in its correct
|     location, nor are the identifier URIs finalized yet.
| 
| to
| 
|     Please note that this page is not yet necessarily in its final
|     location, nor are its identifier URIs to be considered stable yet.

I thought about that, but decided to leave it as it was, since that
way we are much less likely to have people start using these PSIs
before we know they are stable. It would be potentially damaging for
us to have people start using these new PSIs and then to see them
change. 

It's better to be on the safe side, I think.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >