Question for Nat about update to RFC 3066

["Drummond Reed" <drummond.reed@cordance.net>]

Nat (and other TC members interested in internationalization issues):

In working on the second working draft of the XRI Metadata spec, I was
researching the status of RFC 3066, the last RFC for language tags (which
has always been our intent to make the normative reference for the contents
of the $l namespace.)

Given that RFC 3066 was published in January 2001, it wasn't surprising to
find that work on "RFC 3066bis" has been going on for several years.

What did surprise me is how much it has evolved. The current draft of "RFC
3066bis", dated January 11, 2005, is at:

	http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-phillips-langtags-09.txt

This draft now includes explicit subtags for language, extended language,
script, region, variant, and extension (plus the ability to add private use
tags).

It looks like a wonderful piece of work. Unfortunately we can't reference it
yet because it hasn't yet become an RFC or IESG standard (undoubtably it's
headed there like RFC 2396bis and IRI).

However, Nat, my key question for you is whether, with the addition of these
new subtags, this updated language tag specification will remove the need
for us to separately define the "$f" space that you and I have been
discussing. Specifically I believe the script (section 2.2.3), Region
(2.2.4), and Variant (2.2.5) subtags seem to provide all the descriptive
power we were intending for $f (and more), and have the benefit of not
requiring another $ space.

If you agree, let me know and I will remove the $f section. For everyone
else interested in internationalization of XRIs, this update of 3066 will
provide an extremely rich vocabulary for the $l space.

=Drummond