> From [log in to unmask] Tue Oct 28 05:01 PST 1997
> On Mon, 27 Oct 1997, Andrew Daviel wrote:
> > Re. "3.12. Language Label: "Language"
> >
> > The language of the intellectual content of the resource.
> > Where practical, the content of this field should coincide with
> > RFC 1766 [3]; examples include en, de, es, fi, fr, ja, th, and zh."
> >
> > I'd thought at some point that we were going to use Z39.53,
> > e.g. eng, ger, spa, fin, fre, jpn, etc. (May 97 on meta2)
> > Is it now firmly RFC 1766, and if one uses a scheme, does one put
> > "RFC 1766", "RFC1766", "ISO 639:1988", "ISO639", "Z39.53", "NISO Z39.53"
> > or what ??
Misha should be able to address this question better than I, but I'll
try to make a start. Yes, the recommendation to use Z39.53 was changed
in this draft to RFC 1766 in response to the observation that RFC 1766
specifies the prevailing Internet convention for language specification
(eg, web documents, MIME body parts), it incorporates ISO 639 and ISO 3166
(country codes), and it describes an existing IANA extension/registration
mechanism. See http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1766.txt for details.
I don't know the answer to your question of how to specify "RFC 1766"
as a value of the "scheme" qualifier. That's supposed to be covered
in a separate document.
> When making a suggestion about a standard to use, keep in mind that ISO
> 639-2 (Codes for the representation of names of languages--3 character
> code) was ballotted this past year and passed. It is out as a Final Draft
> International Standard (usually a formality) before publication. It was
> largely based on Z39.53 and any changes in the ISO document will also be
> changed in Z39.53. It is likely (I think) that the RFC would be adjusted
> to reflect this new international standard. The advantage over the current
> ISO 639-1 (on which the RFC is based) is that there are many more
> languages covered (about 4 times as many).
>
> I can keep the list informed about the status of the standard and when
> it's actually published.
It seems like an important question is whether RFC 1766 will be updated
to reflect ISO 639-2 (which is based on Z39.53).
-John
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