At 11:19 +0200 2002-05-08, Keld Jørn Simonsen wrote:

>I think that in some cases it is a sensible thing to add a 2-letter code
>for a language that already has a 3-letter code. This could be of quite
>some versability eg in the UNIX world. A recent addition was Walloon that
>got the code "wa".

The three-letter code and the two-letter code for Walloon were added
at the same time. That is part of the agreement. The freeze applies
to languages which were already encoded with three letters but not
with two letters at the time of publication of 639-1:2002.

>I really do not see any problems for the internet with such an addition.
>All other codes would still work.

Please read RFC 3066, Keld. For internet use, only one code is
allowed. Aliases are not allowed. You have to use "da" not "dan".

> > This is to support the internet application of language tagging,
>> where we have a legacy of two-letter codes for Danish and English,
>> but also now a set of three-letter codes which are currently being
>> used. So far, codes are all unique. Changing this rule would
>> introduce ambiguity for e.g. Hawai'ian.
>
>Non sequitur. The iso 639-1 codes are not legacy, but are very much in
>use. The 3-letter codes are only emerging, and not really used for
>mainstream production in many applications/usage areas.

They were legacy insofar as they were in use and it would have been
impossible to replace them with three-letter codes.

>I do not see how this would change anything for Hawai'ian on the
>internet.

Because 3066 says "use 639-1 where you can, 639-2 in other cases".
Because Hawai'ian is in 639-2 now, but not 639-1, it means that the
three-letter code is being used for Hawai'ian. If a two-letter code
would be introduced, there would be two different codes for Hawai'ian
for internet use, which detabilizes the whole thing.

My gods, we went all over all of this and got agreement from the JAC
two years ago or more.
--
Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com