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Re: [Fwd: hebrew keymappings] (fwd)
TC>> > Well, W3C itself says "he" in one place and "iw" in another...
TC>>
TC>> In the same 4.0 standard ?
See here, for example:
http://www.w3.org/International/O-charset-lang.html
Though, it also says that the leading charset for Russian, for example, is
iso-8859-5, which I have very hard time to believe (leading is
windows-1251, and next is, most likely, koi8-r).
TC>> Or could it be that 'iw' was told as recommended to recognize for
TC>> compatibility purposes ?
TC>>
TC>> > standard was once to set names by *native* transcription. Thus "de" and
TC>> > not "ge", "iw" and not "he".
TC>>
TC>> but 'ja', 'ko', 'cs',...
I think it's because 90% of people even don't know how Japanese call
Japan... :) Well, so they should say "we took it by english transcription"
at least.
TC>> (and why 'iw' and not 'iv' ?)
God knows... There are some rules in Hebrew-English transliteration, that
dictate what letter you use, but I don't remember them, they are too
complicated.
TC>> The two letter code is just that, a two letter code.
TC>> What is important is to agree on one ad stick with it.
Exactly.
TC>> It seems that the current accepted language code for hebrew
TC>> language is 'he'; so I think it is the one to use. I don't know
Well, in fact there's *no* current accepted language code, just because
nobody supports hebrew to an extent that it could be talked about.
Moreover, most sites supporting hebrew are made in direct contradiction
with http://www.w3.org/International/O-HTML-bidi.html - and that's because
there's only one browser that indeed supports BIDI - it's Hebrew MSIE. So
until there's a range of browsers, applications, etc that do support
languages and do react on 'he' or 'iw' language code as it should be - we
can only make theories one way or another.
TC>> why nor when the change from 'iw' to 'he' has been done; but I
TC>> personally think there are more important things to do than to
TC>> fight to have the language code changed back again.
Surely, now it's no use to change again, I just was ranting why they
couldn't settle this 10 years before. All in all, Hebrew is not a new
language at all, you know... :)
TC>> he_IL.ISO8859-8 is there from XFree86 3.3.3 at least (I jsut
TC>> checked in the sources)
Not in RH packages. It has /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/iso8859-8/ but no
mention on language.
TC>> Linux has absolutely nothing to do here ! The iso language code
TC>> is not defined by "Linux", nor by XFree86, nor by GNU.
Yes, but that Linux that would be breaking, not ISO...
TC>> Is here any good reason to use 'iw' (other than just because you
TC>> previously did so and don't want to do the little needed change
TC>> in some config file) instead of 'he'; knowing that 'he' is what
TC>> seems to be the preferred form used by international
TC>> standandardization bodies ?
*I* can do it. Or rather could, because I rarely use locales anyway. But
somebody lured with "Linux has full locale support" marketing and defining
his beloved locale only to find that some upgrade to "newset glibc" broke
all his setup will be up for an unpleasant surprise. That's why I'm
ranting - standards are not the things that should be changing "just
because", they are standards for being constant over time... Especially
standartds for such things as language codes, which by it's nature don't
change much.
--
frodo@sharat.co.il \/ There shall be counsels taken
Stanislav Malyshev /\ Stronger than Morgul-spells
phone +972-3-9316425 /\ JRRT LotR.
http://sharat.co.il/frodo/ whois:!SM8333
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