> > > Formal and informal forms are, for the purposes of Majordomo, really
> > > distinct languages. It will probably be easier and cleaner to treat
> > > them as such. The only issue that remains is naming them.
> >
> > The more difficult issue is deciding what to serve when a user requests
> > e.g. "German".
>
> Jason's initial concept of "search lists" does this already.
Yes... I understand this.
> If I understood Jason correctly, here's what it would look like:
>
> # <lang> is an ISO language code
>
> files/stock/informal/<lang> # contains the informal language set
> files/stock/<lang>/ # contains the standard
> # (formal) language set
> files/<lang> # if the site maintainer really
> # wants to, he can put own versions
> # of language sets here
>
> All that Md2 needs now is a language search list:
>
> @LANGUAGE_SEARCHLIST = ("files", "files/stock");
IF all the <lang> files are complete and up-to-date THEN I agree that this
is a good concept. Unfortunately I don't think that it will be feasible to
gurantee that, unless one is willing to accept a very severe reduction of
the number of supported languages.
That is the reason why I have been arguing for a different scheme (which I
admit is much more complicated from the programmer's view-point).
> - As described by Norbert, there are languages and language dialects
> that do not have two letter ISO codes. But there already is an answer:
> http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/vance/iso639/ (see part 2). A new ISO
> standard with three letter codes exists. So we only have to update
> Locale::Language with the new codes so that it supports both.
I think we should wait with implementing those three-letter ISO codes
until there is a RFC which says that they should be used on the internet.
Until then we should follow the procedures outlines in RFC1766.
> - This leaves those languages that do not have a language code at all.
> Klingon etc. For these languages, we'd really have to create our own
> list.
No... there is a standard registration procedure for codes for such
languages already. Copies of the registration forms for the languages which
have been registered so far can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/languages/
Greetings, Norbert.
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