Hi Niall, hello Pierre, hello all.
I'm caught in two minds.
One mind thinks about the creation of metadata tools and records, and this
mind says "keep it simple" use "en" unless the difference is really
significant. For example, I can imagine a spelling tutorial where en-US vs
en-UK might matter! By extension it might matter in text-input questions.
The other mind thinks about how metadata may be used by people who have
concerns which I shouldn't try to pre-judge, and that mind says be as
precise as is practitable (but don't be precise if it means being
innacurate). Systems can "dumb-down" the metadata if they don't care about
the distinction, so Pierre might want to know about Flemish Vs Dutch (both
nl in ISO639-2) but ignore the difference betweem US vs UK english whereas
for us it could be the other way round.
Right now I don't have a strong preference for one approach or the other. I
think in your case, Niall, either would work. You have a choice: risk not
providing some of your users with information they would like or risk
having your metadata mangled by systems which haven't implemented the LOM
with all the flexibility it should have. I don't have a strong feel for how
many systems will have problems with en-GB, I hope it is none, perhaps
other folk on this list will be able to clarify one way or the other?
Phil.
Niall Sclater wrote:
> Thanks to Pierre, Phil and Phil for the clarifications.
>
> I hadn't spotted the "full" tab in Reload but am pleased to see that it
> works nicely and all my data is visible that way. Intrallect appears to
> be stricter and less forgiving.
>
> Regarding the use of "en" or "en-GB", I'm not sure we've reached a
> consensus here yet. As a Dutchman, I could imagine that Pierre would
> wonder why he should be forced to use "en-GB" if there was nothing in
> the data that was UK-specific. From that point of view it would make
> sense to have "en" as the default setting and change it to "en-GB" if
> there was something local in the data or a non-US spelling such as
> "colour" instead of "color".
>
> My problem is that my metadata is being generated automatically from a
> template and I did not want question authors to have to bother
> themselves with such details - there is no way that the program which
> creates the metadata will know if the words are UK-specific or not. In
> that case maybe it's better to use "en" for any automatically generated
> metadata where we know it is non-UK specific and to have "en-GB" as the
> default for anything entered by authors which could conceivably have
> something local in it.
>
> I have been trying to concentrate on QTI and avoid being sucked into
> this metadata community but I fear it's already too late. I spent half
> my weekend thinking about it which is very sad.
>
> Niall
--
Phil Barker Learning Technology Adviser
ICBL, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
Mountbatten Building, Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
Tel: 0131 451 3278 Fax: 0131 451 3327
Web: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/
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