Re: Registration of new charset GB18030 (fwd)

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>]

--On 10. juli 2002 09:52 +0800 Anthony Fok <anthony@thizlinux.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> First of all, thank you very much for all your help in adding GB18030 and
> GBK to the registry.
>
> After reviewing Li18nux locale naming guidelines, I wonder if it would be
> desirable to add "GB-18030" as an alias for GB18030,
> and "GB-K" as an alias for GBK?  Many thanks!  :-)

In general, I think aliases are a thing to be avoided.
More names for one thing just means that there is more software that 
understands one name, but not another. And more bugs is not a Good Thing.

>
> 	http://www.li18nux.org/localenameguide/
> 	http://www.li18nux.org/docs/html/CodesetAliasTable-V10.html
>

I think you refer to this as the reason:

     The standard values for the CODESET field shall consist of multiple
     strings exclusively containing LETTERS or NUMBERS in conjunction
     with the delimiter '-'.
     The syntax of the field in ABNF [RFC 2234] is:

          CODESET = STRING1 *( "-" STRING2 )
          STRING1 = 1*LETTERS
          STRING2 = 1*(LETTERS / NUMBERS)

     STRING1 shall consist of uppercase LETTERS only.
     STRING2 shall consist of uppercase LETTERS, NUMBERS, or both.

First, I think the li18nux.org people have made a stupid decision.
They should not be redefining charset names, but using someone else's - if 
that someone is the IETF, they should allow all legal IETF charset names.
If you can tell me who to say that to, I'll be happy to send them a note 
saying so.

Second, there is no reason to change GBK based on this document; GBK is a 
perfectly good STRING1, and STRING2 is optional.

                        Harald