Re: language codes

[Frederik Fouvry <fouvry CoLi Uni-SB DE>]

| 
| Walloon language is not yet recognized by ISO codes (be them 2 or 3 letter
| based); discussions are ongoing in order to obtain one.
| I just have used "wa" because a code was needed in order for the translations
| to work.
| If the officially attributed code would be different, then I'll change;
| in the meantime I prefer a "non offical" code that allows the use of Walloon
| language rather than forbiding in practice its use.

Sure - nothing against getting it to work (that's how it's done
by us for most of the Walloon things too, but there's not that
much ;-).

| > "x-wa" is;
| 
| is it? or is it just as unofficial as "wa" ?

"x" is the official prefix for house-brewn tags.  So you can put
"x-" in front of anything and it'll be valid (well, _almost_
anything ;-).  It's typically meant for languages that are still
to be done, hence "x-wa" or "x-walloon" (the KDE DocBook DTD
customisation uses the first one).  Another example: "x-klingon"
- this one probably without any hope of ever becoming official
;-)

| Also, when I started with "wa", several programs expected the language
| code to be 2 chars only.

I'm sure there were reasons for the current state of affairs
(also for us).  It's just that that we are beginning to find out
that it isn't sufficient anymore.  We already had people show
interest for languages that do not have a 2-character tag in ISO,
for instance (only a 3-character code).

We have to change at some stage, and if we are prepared, and more
or less agree on the setup, that's the best of worlds.

Cheers,

Frederik