[Pkg-isocodes-devel] ISO 639-3

[Tobias Quathamer]

Hi all,

as you know, the values for the "status" attribute in the iso_639_3.xml
file are no longer provided by SIL. Therefore, this attribute should be
removed from the XML file provided by iso-codes.

However: doing so would mean that we need to bump the version number of
iso-codes to 4.0 because of an incompatible change to the XML file. I've
therefore proposed to do some other changes as well to the structure of
the XML file, so that the XML format does not change more often than
necessary.

Unfortunately, I'm currently very short on time, so that I won't manage
to come up with a thought-out suggestion on how to change our XML files
in the next few weeks.

Please note that the changes likely won't affect only iso_639_3, but
also (at least) iso_3166, which should be split into two separate files,
creating another file for the "historic" entries.

Therefore, I'd like to re-add the "status" attribute to the XML
definition for now, so that the release of iso-codes can happen on the
usual timeframe. Note that the status code was "Active" for nearly every
language, the only exception being "lcq" with status "Retired". I think
we can safely assume that these statuses still hold true for the next
weeks, so that we don't distribute false information. (On a side note, I
don't think that this attribute is widely used, if at all.)

Would that be an acceptable way forward?

Regards,
Tobias

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