Re: [office] Fwd: New Last Call: 'Tags for Identifying Languages' toBCP

[Michael Brauer <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM>]

Hi David,

David Faure wrote:
> On Monday 13 December 2004 12:32, Michael Brauer wrote:
> 
>>Hi David,
>>
>>David Faure wrote:
>>
>>>This might be relevant for us since we use fo:language to specify the language
>>>of a run of text. Not for switching to it yet, of course, better keep following XSL
>>>for now, but just in case any of you has input on the IETF draft.
>>>
>>>On this topic, I just noted that our fo:language is validated with [A-Za-z]{1,8} 
>>>(languageCode definition)
>>>This basically means it's "an RFC3066 language code" but without country code.
>>
>>Yes.
> 
> 
> So there is no way currently to tag text as "using the en-GB dictionary instead of the en-US"?

There of course is a way to do that. "en-US" has to be splitted into a
fo:langugage="en" and a fo:contry="GB".

> How do OpenOffice users handle this problem?

See above.

> 
> 
>>>Shouldn't we allow things like fr_CA? (or is that fr-CA ? I'm confused by the RFC
>>>talking about a hyphen, I thought it was an underscore).
>>
>>My understanding of RFC3066 is that it uses a hyphen. The type
>>specifications for "language", "languageCode" and "countryCode" have
>>been derived directly from RFC3006 and XSL-FO.
>>
>>RFC3066 specifies a language as
>>
>>
>>>The syntax of this tag in ABNF [RFC 2234] is:
>>>
>>>   Language-Tag = Primary-subtag *( "-" Subtag )
>>
>>This definition is what we use for the type "language".
> 
> OK
> 
> 
>>In XSL, the datatype used for the language attribute is summarized as
>>
>>
>>>A language-specifier in conformance with [RFC3066].
>>
>>and
>>
>>
>>>The language may be the language component of any RFC 3066 code (these
>>>are derived from the ISO 639 language codes).
> 
> OK
> 
> 
>>That's from my understanding the "primary-subtag" of RFC 3006, that must
>>not contain a hyphen (or underscore).
> 
> 
> Why? It says "language" - which is the full thing, including a possible hyphen and subtag, isn't it?

I'm not sure about this. RFC 3066 calls the full data type it specifies
"language", and it does not specify a "language without a country", and
no "country without a language". XSL-FO for whatever that reason does
that. The XSL-FO definition in fact is not very precise, but I'm
interpreting it as stated above, because

- XSL-FO has different attributes for the language and the country
- it talks about a "language component" and a "country component" of RFC
3066
- language components are derived from ISO 639 - This also applies (more
ore less) to the "primary-tag" of RFC 3066
- contry components are derived from ISO 3166 - This also applies (more
or less) to the 2nd subtag of RFC 3066.
- XSL-FO also supports "xml:lang". It's type is described as "A language
and/or country specifier in conformance with [RFC3066]." and it
description is "The string may be any RFC 3066 code. XSL treats xml:lang
as a shorthand and uses it to set the country and language properties."


Michael

.
> 


-- 
Michael Brauer                                Phone:  +49 40 23646 500
Technical Architect Software Engineering      Fax:    +49 40 23646 550
StarOffice Development
Sun Microsystems GmbH
Sachsenfeld 4
D-20097 Hamburg, Germany                e-mail: michael.brauer@sun.com