From: David Chart (linux@dchart.demon.co.uk)
Date: Mon Oct 21 2002 - 14:04:53 EDT
>
> > As to la-IT, when Latin was a living language, there
> > was no country called Italy - there were Latium,
> > Etruria, Umbria, etc., and later the Roman Empire.
>
> Exactly. Much better though I still don't think it's
> right would be "la-VA" for Vatican City. Of course
> this Latin isn't really the same latin as found in the
> classics either is it. It probably doesn't help for
> orthographic purposes which I feel is the most
> important reason for the "country" or "variety" field
> of the language code existing in the first place.
>
The problem with historical languages is that you need to specify a time
as well. For example, en-GB-1600 is rather different from en-GB-2002
(have a look at Shakespeare). A dictionary based on a renaissance
mathematician is one historical slice of Latin, and different from
la-GB-1400, as well as from la-IT-1100.
Until ISO get this sorted out, which I suppose might happen, I suggest
that we avoid using kludges to handle dead languages and historical
versions of living languages.
(Although the ability to set my locale to en-GB-1600 would be rather
cool -- 'Thou hast changed thy document. Dost thou wish to retain thy
changes on disk?')
-- David Chart http://www.dchart.demon.co.uk/
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