What is happening is that I made a formal proposal to consider how we will
deal with these situations, where the national needs of a country for
making fine distinctions in coding languages is not needed at an
international level. You even stated at the meeting that this was a local
issue. It was also suggested at the meeting that the vote be deferred so
that we could further discuss the issue among those who are actively
applying these codes. In retrospect I feel that would have been the more
prudent action, but I obviously can't undo the past. I don't think any
decision must be absolutely irrevocable when evidence arises that there
may have been a better way to deal with the situation.

However, it appears that I don't have enough support in this group for the
proposal to seriously be considered. This issue will continue to come up
and we will have to deal with it. I urge the group to think about an
extensibility mechanism to allow for these national needs to be met along
with international needs as well as the need for a stable standard because
of the millions of records that now exist using these codes.

And, I don't see that anyone is suggesting that we readdress all the
issues that were decided at the meeting. There was only the one that was
questioned dealing with Norwegian.

Rebecca

On Mon, 6 Mar 2000, [iso-8859-1] Håvard Hjulstad wrote:

> Dear JAC members,
>
> What is actually going on here?
>
> The way I see it, we made a unanimous decision in the JAC to include three
> identifiers for "Norwegian", "Norwegian Bokmål", and "Norwegian Nynorsk"
> respectively. There has been no formal proposal to re-address the question;
> however, an informal suggestion was raised. Following that suggestion there
> has been some feed-back, and I would think that it is becomming clear that
> there will be no consesus to re-address the issue on a formal level.
>
> I can repeat arguments, I can gather even more support, but for what? I
> don't need to argue in favour of something that has already been decided. Do
> we want to re-address all the issues that were decided during the meeting?
>
> Best regards,
> Håvard
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Håvard Hjulstad mailto:[log in to unmask]
> Rådet for teknisk terminologi
> (Norwegian Council for Technical Terminology)
> Postboks 41 Blindern
> NO-0313 Oslo, Norway
> (besøksadresse/visiting address: Forskningsveien 3 B)
> tel: +47-23198040 faks: +47-23198041
> http://www.rtt.org/
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Milicent K Wewerka [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> > Sent: Friday, March 03, 2000 6:01 PM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Norwegian language (and related issues)
> >
> > I think the problem with the codes for Norwegian arises from the
> > existence of three codes. If one is using codes "nob" and "nno," then
> > what does "nor" represent?
> >
> > A colleague of mine pointed out that a similar situation exists in
> > modern Greek with Demotic and Katharevusa usage. Will we have to deal
> > with this situation also?
> >
> > When 639-2 was developed, the code "esk" for Eskimo was eliminated
> > because the four added codes for Yupik, Greenlandic, Inuktitut, and
> > Inupiaq covered all the Eskimo languages.
> >
> > If we have separate codes for the two forms of Mari or the two forms
> > of Sorbian, what use would be made of the existing codes for Mari or
> > Sorbian?
> >
> > Perhaps we should have a principle that the "collective" code is
> > discontinued (withdrawn, deprecated, etc.) when all constituent
> > elements are represented by other codes.
> >
> > Milicent Wewerka
>