[xtm-wg] Language and Country XTM Topic Maps

[Murray Altheim <altheim@eng.sun.com>]

Regarding the two i18n topic maps that have been delivered with the
XTM 1.0 Specification:

   http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/language.xtm
   http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/country.xtm

During the XTM meeting here in Austin we discussed some changes that
will be occurring soon to these topic maps, as described below. Please
note that the known bugs in these topic maps have been fixed, with
the status of language.xtm remaining as "Beta" due to known changes
that will occur to it soon.

The country.xtm topic map will undergo a basic update to bring its code
set up to date as to the latest codes from IANA. This will not affect 
the existing of country-based PSIs made available by this topic map, 
except as IANA code changes require. For example, the PSI for English
or French will not change, but deleted, added or altered codes will
require changes in the topic map's PSIs. I may need to provide a 
"deprecated" topic for some. We will be altering the uppercase basename
to be available only as a variant of the "normal" country name. This 
will also include some slight alterations to the markup for a better 
match to the topic map semantics we are trying to express. None of 
these changes will affect the use of these topics as PSIs.
 
The language.xtm topic map will undergo a similar alteration of the
XTM markup semantics, plus more profound changes due to the greater
availability (and preference) for three vs. two letter language codes.
I will be providing subject-identity-matched topics using two letter
codes as topic IDs so that all existing two letter code-based PSIs
will function, so that we preserve backward compatibility with the
language.xtm topic map provided with the approved specification. 

The advantage of this new topic map (in addition to the updates of 
the language codes themselves) is that the new topic map will also 
provide for each language:

   * language name in English
   * language name in French
   * three character bibliographic code
   * three character terminological code
   * two character ISO 639 code (when available)

The uppercase language name was an artifact of the original source
in ISO 639, but is not in the new code set and will therefore not
be included in this update due to the inappropriateness of our
organization providing case-wrapped names in an i18n environment.

The latter bullet should be noted -- there will approximately four times
as many country codes in the new set, providing about 450 language
names (as opposed to 136 in the current set).

I will provide the updates to these two topic maps as soon as I am able,
perhaps in several weeks' time. I will also provide a Technical Report
describing these changes in more detail, and appropriate uses of these
two in assisting in internationalization of XTM topic maps.

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim                            <mailto:altheim&#x40;eng.sun.com>
XML Technology Center
Sun Microsystems, Inc., MS MPK17-102, 1601 Willow Rd., Menlo Park, CA 94025

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

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