# ISO 639

A Ruby gem that provides the ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-1 data sets along with a some convenience methods for accessing different entries and entry fields. The data comes from the [LOC ISO 639-2 UTF-8 data set](http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/ascii_8bits.html).

To install:

    gem install iso-639

The [ISO 639-1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-1) specification uses a two-letter code to identify a language and is often the recommended way to identify languages in computer applications. The ISO 639-1 specification covers most developed and widely used languages.

The [ISO 639-2](http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/) ([Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-2)) specification uses a three-letter code, is used primarily in bibliography and terminology and covers many more languages than the ISO 639-1 specification.

The other ISO 639 standards are considered beyond the scope of this library.

## Usage

    require 'iso-639'

To find a language entry:

    # by alpha-2 or alpha-3 code
    ISO_639.find_by_code("en")
    # or
    ISO_639.find("en")
    # by English name
    ISO_639.find_by_english_name("Russian")
    # by French name
    ISO_639.find_by_french_name("français")

Entries are arrays with convenience methods for accessing fields:
    
    @entry = ISO_639.find("slo")
    # => ["slo", "slk", "sk", "Slovak", "slovaque"]
    @entry.alpha3_bibliographic
    # => "slo"
    @entry.alpha3 # shortcut for #alpha3_bibliographic
    # => "slo"
    @entry.alpha3_terminologic
    # => "slk"
    @entry.alpha2
    # => "sk"
    @entry.english_name
    # => "Slovak"
    @entry.french_name
    # => "slovaque"

The full data set is available through the `ISO_639::ISO_639_1` and `ISO_639::ISO_639_2` constants.

## Note on Patches/Pull Requests
 
* Fork the project.
* Make your feature addition or bug fix.
* Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a
  future version unintentionally.
* Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history.
  (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but
   bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
* Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

## Copyright

Copyright (c) 2010 William Melody. See LICENSE for details.