From fa64136863d97af7722504b18ce510271f5e254f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Moritz Bunkus Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2015 18:16:23 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Created Chinese not selectable as language (markdown) --- Chinese-not-selectable-as-language.md | 15 +++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+) create mode 100644 Chinese-not-selectable-as-language.md diff --git a/Chinese-not-selectable-as-language.md b/Chinese-not-selectable-as-language.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4875c10 --- /dev/null +++ b/Chinese-not-selectable-as-language.md @@ -0,0 +1,15 @@ +# Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional not selectable as languages in mmg and mkvmerge + +## The problem + +mmg's language drop down boxes do contain »Chinese«, but neither »Chinese (Simplified)« nor »Chinese (Traditional)« can be found. Why? + +## Reason + +The Matroska file format uses [ISO 639-2:1998 language codes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-2) for marking the language of tracks, chapter atoms and other entities. This standard contains quite a number of languages, but for several languages it only contains their family instead of the actual members. Therefore the [list of ISO 639-2 languages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes) contains »Chinese« but neither »Chinese (Simplified)« nor »Chinese (Traditional)«. And this is the reason why you cannot select those in mmg or mkvmerge either. + +Back when the Matroska file format was specified ISO 639-2 was the ISO standard covering the most known languages which is why it was chosen in the first place. Nowadays there are newer standards like [ISO 639-3:2007](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-3) covering a much wider range of languages. But as there are millions of devices out there already implementing the current Matroska specifications we cannot simply switch over to this standard. + +Therefore it won't be possible to select »Chinese (Simplified)« nor »Chinese (Traditional)« in the near future. + +Categories: [merging](Category-merging), [metadata](Category-metadata)