i18n WG
Internationalization Tag Set (ITS)
The Internationalization Tag Set Working Group has published a Last Call Working Draft of the Internationalization Tag Set (ITS) Version 1.0. Organized by data categories, the ITS set of elements and attributes supports the internationalization and localization of schemas and documents. Implementations are provided for DTDs, XML Schema and Relax NG, and for existing vocabularies like XHTML, DocBook and OpenDocument. Last Call comments are welcome through 30 June.
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One of the basis elements of the ITS is that it assumes other standards. Of particular relevance to me is the RFC3066bis that is referred to for language identification.
There are two things wrong with this standard; it lacks information on many languages; ISO-639-3 which is sadly still a dis will help out. However this raises issues; zh is Chinese but it is no longer considered one language. There will also be many new languages that do not have any older codes.
When this code is meant for identifying resources, any resources, than it is important to be able to identify the specific version of an orthography. This needs to be done in a standard way and there is no standard for this.
Consequently; it must be possible to indicate at least ISO-639-3 without any reference to the older codes. There must be a standard way to indicate a version of an orthography.
Without this this schema will work for some but will be sadly deficient for others.
Gerard, Please look at our recently published article Understanding the New Language Tags, which talks about RFC3066bis, and how that will incorporate ISO 639-3 codes when they are finalised. This should take care of the zh problem you mentioned. Note that you can already use zh-Hant and zh-Hans for Traditional and Simplified Chinese.