Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] Reference URLs for language subtags?

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 09:49:46 -0700

Records and registration forms exist only for subtags that have been
added through the normal ietf-languages process, not for everything that
was initially imported from ISO 639 (see RFC 4645 and 5645 for
information on those).
 
For two- and three-letter language subtags, which we can't register on
our own, the only ietf-languages documentation is for relatively minor
changes, like adding or changing names per ongoing ISO 639-3/RA
decisions.
 
The footnote in the Romansh article merely points to a change where we
added Suppress-Script. This is a trivial clerical change from the
standpoint of many users, and if that footnote in the Wikipedia article
is intended to "refer to authoritative information" about Romansh,
neither it nor any expansion of the concept to include earlier
registrations would serve that purpose.
 
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Ietf-languages] Reference URLs for language subtags?
From: Sascha Brawer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, January 10, 2019 9:06 am
To: ietflang IETF Languages Discussion <[email-masked]>
 
Is there a stable URL for seeing all authoritative information about a
BCP47 subtag, i.e. the registry entry plus the final registration form?
 
For example,
https://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-subtags-templates/rm.txt mentions
that it updated a previous version of the record, but it would be nice
if that previous record (and anything else relevant for this BCP47
subtag) could be displayed on the same page.

Another example is the deprecation of language tag i-ami by ami; it
would be nice if
https://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-subtags-templates/ami.txt and
https://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-subtags-templates/i-ami.txt (or
some other stable URL which works for any BCP47 subtag) had the story.

This would be useful for Wikipedia and Wikidata, so that Wikipedia pages
could refer to authoritative information about BCP47 subtags. For
example, the infobox in the Wikipedia article about Romansh
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language] has a footnote next to
the IETF language tag. The language tag and its reference are taken from
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13199#P305 (click on the reference to
expand it). Problem is, there isn’t really a good reference with all
the information, hence the question.