> 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.
True, it not only depends on who you are, but also on what you do or want to
do.
When using Word and its spelling checker, I find the distinction between
Dutch and Flemish important, especially when also checking the grammar of a
text. While performing a search on Google, the options "Only Dutch pages"
and "All Web Pages" are enough to suite my purpose. There I don't care about
Flemish vs Dutch.
For now, I don't know of a reason why I would want the distinction en-US /
en-UK or nl-NL / nl-BE for that matter in the metadata record itself. That
probably is not so much a preference but more a lack of examples of why it
could be useful, and without those I would think that the golden metadata
rule still is "less is better". (of course that last remark is meant to get
those of you with good examples to prove me wrong!)
Pierre Gorissen
Fontys University of Professional Education
The Netherlands
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