Subject: [Ltru] Re: grandfathered tags and generative capacity

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 21:41:35 -0700

Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft dot com> wrote:

> The issue here is that Mandarin Chinese has a grandfathered tag of
> zh-guoyu.

As Peter indicated later, this is in fact a redundant tag, not a
grandfathered one.  'guoyu', being 5 letters long, meets the criteria
for a variant subtag, and so Peter's choice 3 is the correct one:

> 3) The subtag "guoyu" gets treated like a variant, and they simply
> generate a tag using that variant; e.g. zh-Hant-CN-guoyu.

However, assuming the existence of extended language subtags, it's also
true that "zh-cmn" would be a synonym for "zh-guoyu", except that the
former would have a more intuitive syntax: lang-extlang-other-stuff.

When we have grandfathered tags like "no-nyn" that mean the same thing
as proper generative tags like "nn", the correct thing to do is to
deprecate the grandfathered tag.  The only difference between "no-nyn"
and "zh-guoyu" is that the first doesn't qualify as a lang-variant pair
while the second does, purely because of length constraints.

So it might seem reasonable to deprecate the variant subtag 'guoyu' in
favor of the extended language subtag 'cmn', as soon as the latter
becomes available (ISO 639-3).

The only crummy little problem is that, once again, subtags can only be
aliased to other subtags, and redundant tags can only be aliased to
whole tags.  (The sentence in Section 3.4 about "i-navajo" is still
wrong, by the way.  That tag is deprecated in favor of the complete tag
"nv", not the subtag 'nv'.)  There is no provision to alias a
language-variant combination to a lang-extlang combination.  Figuring
out a reasonable way to do so is the challenge.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/

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From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 13:19:26 -0700

Hi -

I've followed up on the thread "grandfathered tags and generative
capacity" by creating ticket [psg.com #992].  Please continue
discussion of this issue using this ticket identifier in the
subject line.

Randy, ltru co-chair

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 22:12:39 -0400

> discussion of this issue using this ticket identifier in the

Okay.

Peter Constable scripsit:

> But now throw into this mix the fact that we have certain grandfathered
> tags - grandfathered because they don't fit the general syntax. What
> does someone do if they need to denote a category that's a restriction
> on something for which there's a grandfathered tag? For example, what
> does someone use to denote Mandarin written in traditional characters
> for use in Mainland China? The issue here is that Mandarin Chinese has a
> grandfathered tag of zh-guoyu. 

IMHO that should be treated purely as a grandfathered tag and not fitted
into the generative system until we have the productive form zh-cmn
available.  The fact that 'guoyu' looks like a variant tag doesn't make it one,
as Abraham Lincoln said about a dog's tail (it's not a leg even if you
call it one).

In fact, I formally propose that we modify section 3.7 as follows.  Replace
the following three paragraphs:

# Tags that are not deprecated that consist entirely of subtags that are
# valid under this document and which have the correct form and format for
# tags defined by this document are superseded by this document. Such tags
# are placed in records of type 'redundant' in the registry. For example,
# "zh-Hant" is now defined by this document.
# 
# Tags that are not deprecated and which contain subtags which are
# consistent with registration under the guidelines in this document will
# have a new subtag registration created for each eligible subtag. If all
# of the subtags in the original tag are fully defined by the resulting
# registrations or by this document, then the original tag is superseded
# by this document. Such tags are placed in the 'redundant' section of
# the registry. For example, "en-boont" will result in a new subtag
# 'boont' and the RFC 3066 registered tag "en-boont" placed in the
# redundant section of the registry.
# 
# Tags that contain one or more subtags that do not match the valid
# registration pattern and which are not otherwise defined by this
# document will have records of type 'grandfathered' created in the
# registry.

with the following text:

# Tags that are not deprecated that consist entirely of subtags that are
# valid under this document, contain no variant or extension subtags,
# and have the correct form and format for tags defined by this document
# are superseded by this document. Such tags are placed in records of type
# 'redundant' in the registry. For example, "zh-Hant" is now defined by
# this document.
# 
# All other tags will have records of type "grandfathered" created in the
# registry.

The effect of this is to initialize the registry with no subtags of type
"variant".  It will be up to [email-masked] to add them as
needed; presumably they will add 1901, 1996, boont, and scouse, but not
guoyu.

(This leads to another problem with grandfathered tags that I'll address
in my next posting so it can get a new ticket number.)

> zh-guoyu
> 
> zh-cmn-Hant / zh-cmn-CN / zh-cmn-Hant-CN / etc.

I think that's right, although of course zh-cmn will work too,
once ISO 639-6 comes on line.

-- 
And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening
beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from
inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding
and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic
tenebrous ultimate gods -- the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul
is Nyarlathotep. (Lovecraft) John [email-masked]|ccil.org/~cowan

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 14:29:27 +0200

John Cowan wrote:

> The effect of this is to initialize the registry with no
> subtags of type "variant".  It will be up to
> [email-masked] to add them as needed; presumably
> they will add 1901, 1996, boont, and scouse, but not guoyu.

And what's the procedure to get rid of zh-guoyu as soon as
something better is availale ?  Scanning draft -01 quickly I
found a forward reference to 3.7 (= what you want to update)
in 3.2:

| although grandfathered items may be deprecated over time.
| Refer to Section 3.7 for more information.

But in 3.7 I lost it, is the deprecation an automatical side-
effect of "something better was added", and the tag reviewer
is expected to catch it, or is this always required to be a
separate procedure ?

BTW, we're talking about only ten variants, and you enumerated
four as almost clear (1901, 1996, boont, scouse).  That leaves
cel-gaulish, sl-nedis, sl-rozaj, and the three zh variants.

If whatever you want makes the draft shorter I'd support it :-)

                     Bye, Frank