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Subject: Re: [geolang-comment] First proposals for ISO 639 and 3166 available



* Steve Pepper
| 
| First of all, I think those of you who were at the (non-)meeting in
| Montreal did a good job and took all the correct (non-)decisions.

Thanks for the support. :)

| The only (non-)decision that needs tweaking in the (non-minutes) is
| the one stating that numeric codes will be used, giving the
| impression that both 3166 and 639 *have* numeric codes.  In fact of
| course, only 3166 does.

This is correct. I'll fix that when I update the minutes to fix the
quorum bug.
 
| Since the use of rows in tables as subject indicators was raised, I
| want to state explicitly that I am perfectly happy with this
| (non-)decision. Take a look at iso-3166\index.html or
| iso-639\index.html: I think they work just fine.  Humans understand
| tables like this, so I don't see the objection.

They work, and people do understand this, but I don't think the
solution is perfect, exactly. If someone has a bright idea for how to
do better I would be all ears (or eyeballs, depending on medium :).
 
| Comments on the proposed deliverables themselves:
| 
| * Typing topics should be included (especially in the *-meta.xtm
|   topic maps) for classes such as PSISET, VERSION, PUBLICATION-DATE,
|   etc.
|   Of course, this is the domain of the PubSubj TC, but they need the
|   input and this committee needs something more complete for
|   evaluation purposes.  Suggest creating a strawman
|   pubsubj-basic.xtm that can be merged into our XTMs.

Strictly speaking that would be out of scope, but given that it's just
a matter of which hats we (or at least some of us) are wearing I think
that would make sense. We could make a PSI set that contains what we
think we need, and the PubSubj TC can consider that input.
 
| * More importantly, the *-basic topic maps should capture as much as
|   possible of the 3166 and 639. Specifically: 3166-basic.xtm should
|   have either scoped names or typed occurrences for 2- and 3-letter
|   codes (and probably also numeric codes, even though they are to be
|   found via the subject indicator)

I guess that makes sense. It may be something humans want to see, and
it's certainly something one might want to use for lookups.
 
| * Since we are defining a published subject for "language" and
|   "country", I think we should also have explicit typing within
|   3166-basic and 639-basic.

Can of worms. 

The 639 codes fall into three categories: language codes, collective
language codes, and codes which don't represent either. The trouble is
that distinguishing between these three is decidedly non-trivial and
not done in the source standard. I feel this is something third
parties should do, rather than the TC. 

After all, once we have the PSIs the whole point is that anyone can
say anything they like about these subjects. To illustrate that I
created my own attempt at assigning the correct types, based on the
ISO 639 <-> Ethnologue mapping done by Peter Constable and Gary
Simons[1]. After manual tweaking the result corresponds pretty well
with what Constable told me (in private email, sorry) their result
was. The XTM file is attached for perusal, but note that this is *not*
meant as a TC publication or proposal.

There is a similar problem with ISO 3166. It includes things like
Antarctica and Bouvet Island, which are definitely not countries, and
many territories and islands which are somewhat borderline. So again I
think that is territory best left to third parties.

Thanks very much for the comments, BTW. I've noted all of these so
that they can be properly discussed in TC a meeting.

[1] <URL: http://www.ethnologue.com/iso639/default.asp >

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC        <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >

Attachment: 639-types.xtm.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data



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