Re: Bibliographic vs. Terminological Language Codes (ISO 639-2)

The threat by ISO was (temporarily) neutralized, but still, caution is
warranted:

Rather full details at:

http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2003-09-20-a.html
"Standards Organizations Express Concern About Royalty Fees for ISO Codes"

Mongo list of references on language tags at:

http://xml.coverpages.org/languageIdentifiers.html
"Language Identifiers in the Markup Context"

- Robin

-----------------------------------------------------
Robin Cover
XML Cover Pages
WWW: http://xml.coverpages.org
ISOGEN: rcover <at> innodata-isogen.com
OASIS: robin.cover <at> oasis-open.org

On Tue, 4 May 2004, Branko Collin wrote:

> On 4 May 2004, at 8:08, Manuel Sánchez wrote:
>
> > At the Miguel de Cervantes DL we are trying to normalize or regularize
> > the use of language codes from ISO 639
> > (http://lcweb.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/englangn.html). At the very
> > beginning we started using 2-letter codes but later on we had to start
> > using 3-letter ones. Now we are about to re-process all the xml files
> > and want to use only 3-letter codes. But, in some languages, two
> > different codes are provided (one for the bibliographic code and
> > another for the terminological one). So, which one should we use for
> > the 'lang' attribute in the <foreign> element? Does TEI recommend the
> > use of the bibliographic or the terminological one?
>
> A tangential issue, though probably not something to overly worry
> about, is that ISO claims copyright to its language codes. I doubt
> this would hold up in a court of law, but first you would need the
> financial clout to survive a court of law. (IANAL)
>
> Currently, they 'license' (quote marks because I don't believe their
> claim has any worth) all uses of their codes for free.
>
> <http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/commcentre/pressreleases/2003/Ref871.html>
>
> --
> branko collin
> collin <at> xs4all.nl
>
>