Subject: [Ltru] script tag for IPA

From: Martin Hosken <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:17:30 +0700

Dear All,

A newbie question. What should the tag for English in IPA be?

I realise that there are probably two choices for this: a new script IPA
or a subscript of Latn. My only thought is that any language may be
written using IPA so if a subscript tag must be registered for each
language, that's a lot of registration. Apart from that I'm easy either
way, I would just like to know what to use.

TIA,
Martin Hosken

_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 10:38:40 -0400

> way, I would just like to know what to use.

This is part of the general problem of transliteration/transcription,
which is not (yet) handled by the RFC 4646 framework.  The best permanent
answer is probably to create a -t-xxxx standardized extension to
4646, as provided for, and to create a registration authority to
register and maintain codes for different transliterations.

No one has hitherto stepped forward to become the registration authority,
however.

Until then, the best solution is probably to keep the transliteration
separate from the RFC 4646 language tag, or else to use -x-something
as a private-use transliteration subtag.

-- 
While staying with the Asonu, I met a man from      John Cowan
the Candensian plane, which is very much like       [email-masked]
ours, only more of it consists of Toronto.          http://:www.ccil.org/~cowan
        --Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 11:05:53 -0700

Hi -

> From: "John Cowan" <[email-masked]>
> To: "Martin Hosken" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 7:38 AM
> Subject: Re: [Ltru] script tag for IPA
>

> as a private-use transliteration subtag.
...

As a technical contributor...

Although it would be nice to have a general solution to the transcription /
transliteration problem, perhaps IPA transcriptions are common and
important enough to merit an immediate solution, even while recognizing
that a given utterance may be transcribed in a large number of ways,
depending on the needs and preferences of the transcriber.  What
would it take to have the powers that be add a four-letter script code
for it?

Randy

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:17:09 -0400

> would it take to have the powers that be add a four-letter script code

There's only one relevant power that be, and that's (qua ISO 19542
Registrar, not qua LSTR), and he's already rejected it.  Good luck.

-- 
How they ever reached any  conclusion at all    <[email-masked]>
is starkly unknowable to the human mind.        http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        --"Backstage Lensman", Randall Garrett

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 11:19:44 -0700

That was raised on the script JAC.

I personally think it's a good idea. The script code already incorporates
variations which are essentially orthography (Hant vs Hans), and other
differences that are simply glyphic variation (Fraktur Latin). It would be
extremely useful if we had an IPA variant script (and for that matter, a
polytonic variant script).

But I'll include Everson on this so that he can voice his opinion.

Mark

---

From: Michael Everson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:49:03 +0100

At 11:19 -0700 2006-09-13, Mark Davis wrote:
>I personally think it's a good idea. The script 
>code already incorporates variations which are 
>essentially orthography (Hant vs Hans), and 
>other differences that are simply glyphic 
>variation (Fraktur Latin). It would be extremely 
>useful if we had an IPA variant script (and for 
>that matter, a polytonic variant script).
>

I have opposed this kind of thing for a long 
time, because IPA isn't a script. Nor is it a 
style in the way that Fraktur or Gaelic are 
styles of Latin.

Polytonic Greek orthography is *not* a variant of 
the Greek script. It is an orthography which 
simply uses more characters than Monotonic Greek 
orthography does. There is no justification for 
suggesting otherwise, as I have said to you 
before on that issue. Polytonic orthography 
simply uses more (Greek) characters than 
Monotonic does.

You might as well suggest that ASCII-only English 
uses a different script from English which uses 
diacritical marks as in façade, coöperate, 
résumé, naïve, rôle, or belovèd. But that 
wouldn't be correct. One orthography simply uses 
more (Latin) characters than the other.

Similarly, apart from a few straggling imports 
from Greek (which should be represented by Latin 
clones for a variety of reasons), all of the IPA 
characters are Latin. Many natural orthographies, 
in Africa for instance, use characters which 
originated as phonetic characters.

There is also the problem that other Latin 
phonetic alphabets exist which are not IPA. 
Here's a test. Consider the text [paketilonu]. 
What script is it written in? Latin? The 
"International Phonetic Alphabet"? The "Uralic 
Phonetic Alphabet"? The "Lepsius Phonetic 
Alphabet"?

Answer: All of the above. Ergo: Latn.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 16:29:47 -0400

> more (Latin) characters than the other.

Sub-scripts are introduced for practical reasons.  Hans and Hant are
just subsets of Hani, but it's handy to be able to differentiate, and the
difference is more like a script difference than it is like anything else.

> There is also the problem that other Latin phonetic alphabets exist
> which are not IPA.  Here's a test. Consider the text [paketilonu].
> What script is it written in? Latin? The "International Phonetic
> Alphabet"? The "Uralic Phonetic Alphabet"? The "Lepsius Phonetic
> Alphabet"?
> 

"What language is 'chat' written in?  English?  French?  Answer: both.
Ergo: Hmmm."

Is Lisu (in the Fraser orthography) written in Latn?  It too uses a
small subset of Latin letters plus some novel ones.

-- 
John Cowan                              [email-masked]
            http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Humpty Dump Dublin squeaks through his norse
                Humpty Dump Dublin hath a horrible vorse
But for all his kinks English / And his irismanx brogues
                Humpty Dump Dublin's grandada of all rogues.  --Cousin James

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:00:12 -0700

At least until an extension was suggested, I had considered getting a
script ID added to 15924 for indicating IPA as a variant of Latn
(Lipa?). Comparing this versus an extension mechanism, there are pros
and cons to consider:

- If an extension was used, then any matching processors that do not
understand the extension would probably assume that "en" and "en-t-xxxx"
were the same -- they have no basis to differentiate other than "there
is some unknown difference", and they have no way to know if that
unknown difference is relevant or not for matching purposes. But if a
script subtag were used, then that is not opaque to any matching
processor: matching would always do something reasonable.

Extension: 0
Script subtag: 1

- A problem I immediately saw with using a script ID when I first
thought of it is that there are probably on the order of 10 important
variations of Latin-based phonetic transcription (and who-knows-how-many
minor or idiosyncratic variants). It wouldn't make sense to have a
script ID for each -- that's really abusing 15924. My thought on dealing
with that problem was to have the script ID be neutral with regard to
the particular convention of phonetic transcript and simply denote
Latin-based phonetic transcriptions (so, "Lphn" rather than "Lipa"?),
and then use variant subtags to differentiate between different
conventions.

Now, clearly an extension would provide a solution to this problem. But
so could the alternative I've just described.

Extension: 1
Script subtag (+ variants): 2

I can't think of any other benefits of an extension mechanism, certainly
not for phonetic transcription, and even for transliterations. It seems
to me that transliterations will require the use of a script subtag.
E.g. consider Chinese in Wade-Giles. Having a tag along the lines of
"zh-t-wadegiles" really isn't sufficient for matching; you'd really want
"zh-Latn-t-wadegiles" so that all matching processors will see the
*very* important difference between Chinese in Latin script versus
Chinese in ideographs. But then, what's the benefit of the singleton
"-t"? None that I can see.

So, I'm still inclined to handle transcriptions and transliterations
using the mechanisms already available to us: script and variant
subtags.

Peter Constable

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 7:39 AM
To: Martin Hosken
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [Ltru] script tag for IPA

which is not (yet) handled by the RFC 4646 framework.  The best
permanent

No one has hitherto stepped forward to become the registration
authority,
however.

-- 
While staying with the Asonu, I met a man from      John Cowan
the Candensian plane, which is very much like       [email-masked]
ours, only more of it consists of Toronto.
http://:www.ccil.org/~cowan
        --Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes

---

From: Michael Everson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 22:52:39 +0100

>difference is more like a script difference than it is like anything else.

This does not convince me that IPA is some kind of *Latp script 
variant of Latn. I'm sorry, but it just isn't by everything I know 
about scripts. Moreover, there are dozens of Latin phonetic alphabets 
and varieties of them.

>"What language is 'chat' written in?  English?  French?  Answer: both.

Language is a different thing from script.

>Is Lisu (in the Fraser orthography) written in Latn?

No.

>It too uses a small subset of Latin letters plus some novel ones.

No. Its characters derive from Latin (just as Thaana letters derive 
from Arabic digits). But it no longer has case, and indeed Lisu text 
written in the lower-case versions of the script is illegible to 
readers. It has become something else.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 16:49:24 -0700

Hi -

> From: "Michael Everson" <[email-masked]>
> To: "John Cowan" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 2:52 PM
....
...

One could probably make the same argument regarding IPA
transcriptions of English, particularly if the transcription is narrow
or of a speaker the reader wouldn't understand.

Randy

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:35:27 -0700

I agree. I think the main issue is that what constitutes a script is
somewhat fuzzy, and what constitutes a script variant much more so.

I don't see any clear reason why Hant (vs Hans) or Latf (vs Latn) is an
appropriate distinction, and yet IPA is not. For Hant and IPA, both are
choices of repertoires used to represent a written form. Both make a
dramatic difference to users. For Latf, it is even less plain why it is
somehow deserving of a distinction as a script variant and yet IPA is not.

Mark

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:47:42 -0400

> readers. It has become something else.

IPA and its rivals don't have case either, something you have said
in the past is fundamental to the nature of the Latin script (and
I agree).

-- 
There is / One art                      John Cowan <[email-masked]>
No more / No less                       http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
To do / All things
With art- / Lessness                     -- Piet Hein

---

From: Martin Hosken <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:05:16 +0700

Dear Michael,
> about scripts. Moreover, there are dozens of Latin phonetic alphabets

Passing all remaining angels, I'll have a go.

1. The IPA is a controlled alphabet so while one can write different
types of transcription of the same text (most usually phonetic vs
phonemic) it is clear that someone is using the IPA to do it in
contradistinction to using a Romanisation or some other phonetic alphabet.

2. Words in Roman script languages are regularly transcribed (not
transliterated, this isn't about transliteration) into IPA. Notice that
they are different writing systems and while people may come up with
different Roman based scripts and transcriptions, they don't, not very
often.

3. This is not about trying to come up with a solution for other
transcription schemes which are generally recognised to be in a specific
script. Thus pinyin is considered a Romanisation of Chinese, but an IPA
transcription is not. An IPA transcription is considered to be in IPA
not Roman.
>>>  Answer: All of the above. Ergo: Latn.

And what about the 'case' for Cyrllic (same in both) or the 'MONEY' in
Greek? Ergo: Latn?

I'm not asking for Americanist to be considered its own script, I'm not
asking for Pinyin to be its own script. So what is it about the IPA that
makes me think of it as a separate script?

1. It is a worldwide standard that dominates its field and is
immediately recognisable as such by anyone who can read it, in contrast
to reading a Romanisation which is instantly recognisable as being non
IPA. I'm not talking about edge cases here, I'm talking about when a
linguist sees transcription, they know IPA when they see it. Of course
it's not hard to fool someone, but that's not generally the aim.

2. It has subcategorisations within it: phonemic and phonetic being two
major writing system categories

3. It isn't used for any orthography since it lacks case. There are no
known languages with an IPA orthography, therefore the IPA is a
different thing from any orthographic script.

4. Since it is nearly uniquely possible to process text in the IPA
without knowledge of its language (at least to a greater extent than for
other scripts) it needs to be treated differently from normal Latn
orthographies. Warning a user that some text is not in Latn is very
important.

Well that's my off the cuff attempt and you are welcome to
presuppositionally shoot it down (just as a number of people
presuppositionally say Lisu is Latin). As others have said, we are
dealing in grey areas here and the Latin script has been so productive
that when it comes to Latin things get very grey indeed.

Yours,
Martin

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:25:46 -0700

From: Martin Hosken [mailto:[email-masked]] 

> immediately recognisable as such by anyone who can read it

IMO a 15924 ID for Latin-based phonetic transcription would be appropriate. But IMO it would not be appropriate to assign 15924 ID specific to some systems of Latin-based phonetic transcription but not others. Latin-based phonetic transcriptions should have one consistent mechanism of support in IETF language tags.

My vote is to add a script variant ID "Lphn" or "Latp" to 15924 and then register variant subtags denoting specific systems of phonetic transcription each listing "Lphn" (or "Latp") as a prefix. Thus, we'd have tags along the lines of "en-Lphn-intlphon", "chr-Lphn-amerphon", "bad-Lphn-dokephon". This allows 

- matching content in some language whether using practical orthography or phonetic transcription
- matching content in some language in phonetic transcription of any kind
- matching content in some language in some specific system of phonetic transcription

All of these are useful.

Peter Constable

---

From: Martin Hosken <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:31:38 +0700

Dear Peter,

> - matching content in some language in some specific system of phonetic transcription

My understanding of RFC 4646 is that extensions like intlphon need to be
registered *per language*. There seems to be no concept of script
extensions. So either we have to hide it behind a chr-Lphn-t-ipa-phn
(ipa phonemic) or do something else? But I may have misread the RFC.

Yours,
Martin

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 20:49:27 -0700

> My understanding of RFC 4646 is that extensions like 
> intlphon need to be registered *per language*. There 
> seems to be no concept of script extensions. So either 
> we have to hide it behind a chr-Lphn-t-ipa-phn
> (ipa phonemic) or do something else? 

We're in the process of drafting a revised RFC, and one of the issues in the charter to be addressed is in this work is how to handle transcriptions and transliterations. We can make the new RFC do what we think we need it to; we're not constrained by the current RFC so long as we don't introduce a change that would break existing processes or invalidate existing tags.

So, if we determine that the best solution to transcriptions and transliterations involves use of variant subtags that are constrained to a script but not a language, then we simply need to figure out what revisions to the doc should be made to achieve that.

Peter Constable

---

From: Martin Hosken <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:56:59 +0700

Dear Peter,
> So, if we determine that the best solution to transcriptions and transliterations involves use of variant subtags that are constrained to a script but not a language, then we simply need to figure…

As part of that, may I request that the full tag be parsable into
language and script components without recourse to a dictionary. For
example that script components are easily identifiable by being say
first char capitalised. The reason for this is that there are generic
processes that while not needing to know what language some text in, do
need to know about script information. This of course also implies a set
of rules to turn language + script information back into a full tag.

TIA,
Martin

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:16:39 -0700

> first char capitalised.

Please read RFC4646. The syntax is highly parsable, and you can already recognize a script subtag unambiguously. That will not change in RFC4646bis -- guaranteed.

Peter Constable

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:22:00 -0400

> of rules to turn language + script information back into a full tag.

This is already so.  You can identify the subtags in a RFC 4646 tag
(excepting the few grandfathered ones) by a combination of subtag length
and the binary features +/-initial and +/-digits.

For example, a 4-character subtag that is -initial and -digits is a
script; an +initial tag is always a language regardless of other features.

Assembling a tag from subtags is even simpler: the order is always
language-script-region-variant.

-- 
Unless it was by accident that I had            John Cowan
offended someone, I never apologized.           [email-masked]
        --Quentin Crisp                         http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

---

From: Martin Hosken <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 11:35:07 +0700

Dear John,
> language-script-region-variant.

I was thinking more about script variant subtags. Thus splitting
en-Latn-UK-glasgow-Ipapt into en-UK-glasgow and Latn-Ipapt and then
putting it back together without having to know much about glasgow or
Ipapt. Or should that be en-Latn-UK-Ipapt-glasgow? (Glaswegian English
written in IPA phonetically).

Yours,
Martin

---

From: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:44:06 -0700

Peter Constable wrote:
> 
> So, if we determine that the best solution to transcriptions 
 > and transliterations involves use of variant subtags that
 > are constrained to a script but not a language, then we
 > simply need to figure out what revisions to the doc
 > should be made to achieve that.

::shudder:: I think that's a perfectly awful idea for how to handle 
transcription/transliteration. I think extensions are entirely the best 
way to handle this very specialized kind of language identification.

However, only a very tiny modification would be necessary for what you 
desire. Currently we use Basic Language Ranges for Prefix. Changing to 
Extended Language Range would do what you want:

Type: variant
Subtag: polyton
Prefix: *-Grek
Comments: This variant can also be applied to languages
    with a Suppress-Script of 'Grek'

If we relax the prefix check on variants, this works functionally too.

Addison

-- 
Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Yahoo! Inc.

Internationalization is an architecture.
It is not a feature.

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:58:37 -0700

> I was thinking more about script variant subtags.

OK, re my earlier mail considering pros and cons of a -t extension vs using script subtag + variants, this is something that would be provided by an extension but not readily using script + variants (unless we introduced some ad hoc conventions, such as script variants always begin "xs...", or a special variant subtag "scripts" delimits script-variant subtags from language-variant subtags -- a singleton in disguise).

So:

Extension: 2
Script subtag + variants: 2

Peter Constable

---

From: "Jukka K. Korpela" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 08:00:48 +0300 (EEST)

> in the past is fundamental to the nature of the Latin script (and

Under such an interpretation, Latin was not written using the Latin script 
before the middle ages. Actually, even noways, Latin is often written 
unicamerally, in all uppercase or in all lowercase.

The concept of "script" as in "the Latin script", "the Cyrillic script", 
etc., is a very high-level abstraction. The way I see things, a "script" 
in that sense is a collection of writing systems that share are common 
origin and have not diverged too much as regards to their basic symbols.
The invention of lowercase letters vs. uppercase letters does not seem
to constitute a fundamental phenomenon in this respect.

The nature of IPA writing can be interpreted in different ways: it could 
be treated as being based on the Latin script but with a very large number 
of additions (and somewhat artificial changes to meanings of letters), or
as a separate script of eclectic origin. The latter would be more natural.
In particular, I can take, say, a Russian word and write it normally
(using Cyrillic letters), or as transliterated (romanized, using Latin 
letters) according to some scheme, or phonetically using IPA, according to 
some pronunciation. Wouldn't it be appropriate these as using three 
different scripts? The fact that some IPA letters have been coded in 
Unicode as identical to some Latin letters was just a practical choice and 
does not change the identity of the script - any more than the identity of 
the Cyrillic script would have been changed if Cyrillic "A" had been 
encoded as the same as Latin "A", etc.

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

---

From: Michael Everson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 09:07:35 +0100

I think that all of these transcription forms are equivalent.

en-Latn-ipalpha
en-Latn-lepsius
en-Latn-webster
en-Latn-johnson
en-Latn-encarta
en-Latn-duden
zh-Latn-pinyin
zh-Latn-wadegiles
zh-Latn-ipalpha

So to reiterate, I am not convinced that IPA Latin orthography 
differs from Library of Congress Latin orthography or Chicago Manual 
of Style Latin orthography (for Russian or for Georgian 
transcription, for instance) and so it seems to me that those 
orthographies are all subtags of Latin, not a primary variant like 
Latf and Latg.

Transcription of Chinese in Pinyin isn't materially different from 
transcription of Chinese in IPA.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com

---

From: Michael Everson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 08:53:41 +0100

At 17:35 -0700 2006-09-13, Mark Davis wrote:
>I agree. I think the main issue is that what 
>constitutes a script is somewhat fuzzy, and what 
>constitutes a script variant much more so.
>
>I don't see any clear reason why Hant (vs Hans) 
>or Latf (vs Latn) is an appropriate distinction, 
>and yet IPA is not. For Hant and IPA, both are 
>choices of repertoires used to represent a 
>written form. Both make a dramatic difference to 
>users. For Latf, it is even less plain why it is 

Latf and Latg are distinguished in ISO 15924 
because Librarians (it is a TC46 standard) may 
need to distinguish a published edition of "Der 
Blechtrommel" or "An tOileánach" (in terms of 
accessibility or legibility to modern readers) as 
being in Roman or Fraktur/Gaelic script. These 
script variants each cover a range of related 
font styles which are distinct from Roman Latin.

Polytonic Greek uses the same script as Monotonic 
Greek. It uses all the same letters, alpha to 
omega, plus PSILI and DASIA and PERISPOMENI and 
VARIA and YPIGEGRAMMENI and PROSGEGRAMMENI. Right 
there. You're deceiving yourself by the fact that 
the U+1F00 block has a lot of glyphs in it that 
there is some "script" difference because you 
think this might make some sort of programming 
easier. That is my guess anyway. Because 
Monotonic + 6 additional Greek characters does 
not = a script variant like Latf or Latg. The 
script variants are not orthographies. ISO 15924 
isn't designed for that kind of distinction, and 
it would be wrong to introduces such a practice.

With RFC 4646, however, you could distinguish the 
orthographies with *Grek-polyton and 
*Grek-monoton if you wished.

Similarly, IPA is an *orthography* which uses 
Latin letters, and it is not a script. Could you 
not use *Latn-ipalpha? Because as far as I can 
see that is what you want anyway. Here's why.

Russian is your language. You can write ru-Cyrl. 
You can write ru-Latn. Ah, but ru-Latn refers to 
some usual orthographic form of Russian in Latin 
letters. You might need to make this more 
precise. ru-Latn-libcong or ru-Latn-ipalpha. Or 
ru-Latn-uralphon, or ru-Latn-lepsius, or 
ru-Latn-chicago etc etc etc.
-- 
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:44:12 +0900

As a technical contributor, I think that the Greek monotonic/polytonic distinction does not merit a script distinction, but that IPA can
easily be handled as a script. Good arguments for handling IPA
that way have been brought up by many people, I don't want to
repeat them.

Given my above judgement, I don't understand why e.g. the mail below
talks about Greek in detail while the mail it responds to didn't
mention Greek at all.

Regards,     Martin.

At 16:53 06/09/14, Michael Everson wrote:
>>I agree. I think the main issue is that what constitutes a script is somewhat fuzzy, and what constitutes a script variant much more so.
>>
>>I don't see any clear reason why Hant (vs Hans) or Latf (vs Latn) is an appropriate distinction, and yet IPA is not. For Hant and IPA, both are choices of repertoires used to represent a written form. Both make a dramatic difference to users. For Latf, it is even less plain why it is somehow deserving of a distinction as a script variant and yet IPA is not.
>
>Latf and Latg are distinguished in ISO 15924 because Librarians (it is a TC46 standard) may need to distinguish a published edition of "Der Blechtrommel" or "An tOile疣ach" (in terms of accessibility or legibility to modern readers) as being in Roman or Fraktur/Gaelic script. These script variants each cover a range of related font styles which are distinct from Roman Latin.
>
>Polytonic Greek uses the same script as Monotonic Greek. It uses all the same letters, alpha to omega, plus PSILI and DASIA and PERISPOMENI and VARIA and YPIGEGRAMMENI and PROSGEGRAMMENI. Right there. You're deceiving yourself by the fact that the U+1F00 block has a lot of glyphs in it that there is some "script" difference because you think this might make some sort of programming easier. That is my guess anyway. Because Monotonic + 6 additional Greek characters does not = a script variant like Latf or Latg. The script variants are not orthographies. ISO 15924 isn't designed for that kind of distinction, and it would be wrong to introduces such a practice.
>
>With RFC 4646, however, you could distinguish the orthographies with *Grek-polyton and *Grek-monoton if you wished.
>
>Similarly, IPA is an *orthography* which uses Latin letters, and it is not a script. Could you not use *Latn-ipalpha? Because as far as I can see that is what you want anyway. Here's why.
>
>Russian is your language. You can write ru-Cyrl. You can write ru-Latn. Ah, but ru-Latn refers to some usual orthographic form of Russian in Latin letters. You might need to make this more precise. ru-Latn-libcong or ru-Latn-ipalpha. Or ru-Latn-uralphon, or ru-Latn-lepsius, or ru-Latn-chicago etc etc etc.
>-- 

#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:06:40 +0900

>Registrar, not qua LSTR), and he's already rejected it.  Good luck.

The way I read ISO 19542, these decisions are made by (qualified)
majority, not as implied above by a single person. Did I get something
wrong?

Regards,     Martin.

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 18:04:36 +0900

At 12:25 06/09/14, Peter Constable wrote:
>Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
>IMO a 15924 ID for Latin-based phonetic transcription would be appropriate. 

As a technical contributor, I disagree. If we have a script code for
Latin-based transcriptions, then we will get a script code for
Greek-based transcriptions, a script code for Cyrillic-based
transciptions, and so on. Not very orthogonal.

>But IMO it would not be appropriate to assign 15924 ID specific to some 
>systems of Latin-based phonetic transcription but not others. Latin-based 
>phonetic transcriptions should have one consistent mechanism of support in 
>IETF language tags.

In my view, it would not be appropriate to assign any script codes
to transciptions per se at all. But it would be appripriate to
assign script codes to things that can be recognized as scripts,
independent of whether they are used for transcriptions or not.

In that sense, I see a clear difference e.g. between Wade-Giles
and IPA. The clear goal of Wade-Giles is to write Chinese with
Latin letters. Tagging it as Latn is very clearly appropriate.
That it is a particular transcription, or in other words a
particular orthography of Chinese when written in Latin, is
secondary. We would like to figure out how to tag this secondary
aspect, but we shouldn't confuse that with the primary aspect
of using the Latin script.

The clear goal of using IPA is *not* to use the Latin script,
but to create a notation that is phonetically/phonemically
unambiguous. That a lot of characters in IPA are taken from
Latin, and some from Greek, is by convenience only. This is
similar to Cyrillic (borrowing from Greek), or Cherokee.

>My vote is to add a script variant ID "Lphn" or "Latp" to 15924 and then 
>register variant subtags denoting specific systems of phonetic 
>transcription each listing "Lphn" (or "Latp") as a prefix. Thus, we'd have 
>tags along the lines of "en-Lphn-intlphon", "chr-Lphn-amerphon", 
>"bad-Lphn-dokephon". This allows 
>

I don't want to say they are not. But while I think Michael is arguing
too much from a font designer viewpoint (hey, IPA doesn't need a new font,
just a few additional characters, and everything pretty much looks like
standard Latin, while e.g. Fraktur looks way different), your argument
above comes too much from a linguistic viewpoint.

In many cases, I think transcriptions can already be identified by
using a script other than the suppress-script (well, assuming we
got these more complete :-(.

Regards,    Martin.

---

From: Marion Gunn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:05:11 +0000

So I believe, also. BTW, so many msgs are pouring through this list  
at the moment that I also believe nobody could read all and still do  
a decent day's work elsewhere, so this comment of mine is offered on  
the basis that, although I have not read all of that barrage of msgs,  
my gut professional feeling is that a tag for IPA would be a Good  
Thing For All.

As recently as 3 days ago, I was asked to supply Irish texts written  
in IPA for a rather exciting, cutting-edge, project - while I could  
supply some, there was no pointer I could supply for a live Net  
search for more.
mg

On 14 Sep 2006, at 05:00, scríobh Jukka K. Korpela:
> ...
>
> The fact that some IPA letters have been coded in Unicode as  
> identical to some Latin letters was just a practical choice and  
> does not change the identity of the script - any more than the  
> identity of the Cyrillic script would have been changed if Cyrillic  
> "A" had been encoded as the same as Latin "A", etc.

On 14 Sep 2006, at 08:44, scríobh Martin Duerst:
> As a technical contributor, I think that the Greek monotonic/ 
> polytonic distinction does not merit a script distinction, but that  
> IPA can

- -
Marion Gunn * EGTeo (Estab.1991)
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn, Baile an
Bhóthair, Co. Átha Cliath, Éire.
* [email-masked] * [email-masked] *

---

From: "Debbie Garside" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:43:46 +0100

+1 

Debbie Garside

> From: Marion Gunn [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: 14 September 2006 13:05
> To: [email-masked]
> So I believe, also. BTW, so many msgs are pouring through 
> this list at the moment that I also believe nobody could read 
> all and still do a decent day's work elsewhere, so this 
> comment of mine is offered on the basis that, although I have 
> not read all of that barrage of msgs, my gut professional 
> feeling is that a tag for IPA would be a Good Thing For All.
> 
> As recently as 3 days ago, I was asked to supply Irish texts 
> written in IPA for a rather exciting, cutting-edge, project - 
> while I could supply some, there was no pointer I could 
> supply for a live Net search for more.
> mg
> 
> > The fact that some IPA letters have been coded in Unicode 
> as identical 
> > to some Latin letters was just a practical choice and does 
> not change 
> > the identity of the script - any more than the identity of the 
> > Cyrillic script would have been changed if Cyrillic "A" had been 
> > IPA can easily be handled as a script. Good arguments for 
> handling IPA 
> > that way have been brought up by many people, I don't want 
> to repeat 
> > them.
> 
> 
> 
> - -

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:46:03 +0200

On Thu, Sep 14, 2006 at 12:22:00AM -0400,
 John Cowan <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 29 lines which said:

> (excepting the few grandfathered ones) by a combination of subtag
> length and the binary features +/-initial and +/-digits.

Yes (but see later for a counter-example), but may be he wanted
something that could be parsed by a simple engine, such as a regexp
engine, without requiring a full parser?
 
> script;

I do not think so, it depends on the context. In fr-x-abcd, 'abcd' is
not a script.

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 09:39:55 -0600

We currently use a variant in CLDR for polytonic. But it doesn't work
very well -- the orthography really should be before the country so
that you get fallback working properly. (Cf long discussion in archive
about use cases, such as fallback when mixing content from multiple
sources.)

Unfortunately, as we've seen, the script JAC hasn't been willing to
add this, even though they have similar types of variation with Hant/s
and Latn/f. So in CLDR what we are planning to do is to use a
private-use script code for it.

el-Qaap
el-Qaap-<countries>

The same probably holds true of IPA: the orthography is fundamentally
much more important than the variation by country.

Mark

BTW, I really wish that Addison and I had been aware of the
unresponsiveness of the script JAC when we first decided that we
didn't need to have a mechanism for the registration of script codes!

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:21:37 -0400

> about use cases, such as fallback when mixing content from multiple

Can you explain this more clearly?  The difference between polytoniko
and monotoniko orthographies *for the same variant of Greek* seems
to me very small.  To learn to read polytoniko, you learn that the
accent has three different shapes, all of which mean the same thing,
and that words beginning with vowel letters are preceded with either
a left-comma or a right-comma, both of which mean nothing.

Yannis Haralambous neatly classifies Greek into six major types:

* ancient, epigraphical orthography (no accents, breathings, or lower case)
* ancient, conventional orthography (three accents, two breathings, case)
* katharevousa (same)
* dimotiki in katharevousa context (same, spelling not standardized)
* polytoniko dimotiki (same, sometimes acute for grave)
* monotoniko dimotiki (one accent, no breathings)

-- 
No,  John.  I want formats that are actually       John Cowan
useful, rather than over-featured megaliths that   http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
address all questions by piling on ridiculous      [email-masked]
internal links in forms which are hideously
over-complex. --Simon St. Laurent on xml-dev

---

From: Marion Gunn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:22:52 +0000

I think you have made a good argument for introducing such mechanism  
ASAP.
mg

- -

---

From: "Debbie Garside" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:36:19 +0100

Marion wrote:

> I think you have made a good argument for introducing such 
> mechanism ASAP.

I think Marion is right! But I am not sure now is the time to do it! The
main focus of this draft is to include ISO 639-3.  To detract too much from
that mission may be a mistake if we are to stay on target vis-à-vis
deadlines.  The question is, how long would it take to propose text and deal
with the ensuing debate?  That said, ISO 639-3 is not yet published.  

Best regards

Debbie

> Sent: 14 September 2006 18:23
> To: [email-masked]

---

From: Peter Constable <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:28:18 -0700

I believe if you check our new charter, dealing with transcriptions and transliterations is part of the work plan, as well as incorporation of 639-3.

Peter

> From: Debbie Garside [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 9:36 AM
> To: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: [Ltru] script tag for IPA
> 
> Marion wrote:
>

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:48:34 +0200

Peter Constable wrote:
 
> dealing with transcriptions and transliterations is part of
> the work plan

So far I think that eliminating generic variants before they
are abused to emulate extension registries could address this.

The extension registry can define its own rules, e.g. say that
tags with a t-whatever extension must always specify Latn (or
maybe never, anything that makes sense depending on t-whatever)

Frank

---

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 14:54:33 -0700

Recognizability is not so much a problem as professional appearance
is. Consider once again (this is in the archives) the fallback issue,
the reason why script is higher than country. Consider the case where
I am constructing a document (eg web page) from multiple sources.

For source A, I have

<lang>-<region1>-<orthography1>
<lang>-<region1>
<lang>

for source B

<lang>-<region2>-<orthography1>
<lang>-<region2>
<lang>

What I get on the document if I ask for <lang>-<orthography1> or
<lang>-<regionX>-<orthography1> is a ransom-note-look, a mixture of
orthographies. Even if the orthographies are legible, it is not a
professional result. The reason for this is that the differences
between Hant and Hans, between polytonic and monotonic, etc. are much
larger than the differences between countries. And that is why part of
the design of language tags is that they be "big endian".

So as a practical matter, where the othographic distinction rises to
the point where it is more important than the regional differences,
you want it first.

<lang>-<orthography1>-<region1>
<lang>-<orthography1>
<lang>

for source B

<lang>-<orthography1>-<region2>
<lang>-<orthography1>
<lang>

What I get on the web page if I ask for <lang>-<orthography> or
<lang>-<orthography>-<regionX> is something that has a better
appearance.

This is the case for polytonic, and it even more clearly the case for
IPA. The difference between IPA and standard orthography clearly
completely swamps the difference between British and US spellings.

Mark

---

From: Addison Phillips <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:10:58 -0700

Peter Constable wrote:
> I believe if you check our new charter, 
> dealing with transcriptions and transliterations
> is part of the work plan, as well as incorporation
> of 639-3.
> 

It is mentioned as a use case (along with sign languages).

I think there are several approaches we might take, but each has its
disadvantages.

Ducking the problem would probably work. I tend to prefer this option 
because I tend to think that most of these variations do not fit in with 
the traditional use of language tags or the requirements of most users 
of language tags. It is possible that there are things about a given 
piece of content that a language tag cannot completely identify and this 
may even be a good thing.

My problem is that transcriptions and transliterations tend to be linked
to specific languages/language pairs, scripts, or traditions. Usually, 
these processes are applied to a text to make it accessible to users of 
a different writing system or orthographic tradition--usually far 
removed from the traditional form of the source language. Such "wide 
gap" cases can often be identified well-enough with existing script 
codes or using other means. For example "en-Cyrl", "ru-Latn", and 
"zh-Latn" all convey the script and what was done to the text pretty 
well. Knowing the specific transcription scheme is valuable in some or 
even many cases, but unnecessary for most language tag uses.

I also think there are cases where ISO 15924 should reconsider what 
defines a "script". I don't think Mark's Greek cases are really 
"transcriptions" or "transliterations". The Greek case, for example, is 
just a separate writing tradition within the Greek language. One can 
speak of transcribing a text between the two traditions, but that is not 
the same degree of transformation as, say, recording your Chinese 
document in Latin script.

Thus, I think ISO 15924 should consider (since they have a vast
codespace of over 450,000 codes) defining some codes---perhaps special 
purpose "profile" codes---to describe specialized uses of particular 
scripts. The Greek case, various Japanese codes, and Hant/Hans fit that 
model: there is still a high degree of correspondence between the 
distinct cases, but clearly a different usage of the "script" or 
combination of scripts is taking place. IPA might fit here too: it is 
used to write many languages and represents a very specialized use of 
(mostly) Latin script.

So: I think that the WG should try to get ISO 15924 to consider the 
definition of scripts more carefully, while we should also suggest that 
specialists needing to identify the specifics of the 
transliteration/transcription process in a language tag work to develop 
an extension for that purpose.

What I don't think we should do is make up something.

Addison

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 10:38:46 +0900

Hello Mark,

>private-use script code for it.

This will be highly non-interoperable, I guess.

I think we should be careful to distinguish two things:

1) Scripts
2) Orthographies

I think you have given good arguments (in a separate mail) why
major orthographic diffenences such as simplified/traditional
for Chinese or monotonic/polytonic for Greek are in many cases
more important than country differences.

But there is a difference between orthography and script. It would
be a bad idea if we ended up saying that anything that's arguably
more important than a country difference is a script difference.

What would look optimal to me would be to have variants after
the script in certain circumstances, such as
el-Grek-monotonic-gr and
el-Grek-polytonic-gr.

>didn't need to have a mechanism for the registration of script codes!

You mean in RFC 4646?

Regards,    Martin.

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 08:22:24 -0400

Mark Davis scripsit:

> professional result.

I agree.

> The reason for this is that the differences
> larger than the differences between countries. 

I'm not convinced, at least when it comes to mixed-toniko orthography.
I think that's a fault on about the same level as random mixtures
of "labor" and "labour", "center" and "centre" in an English document.
(Some very large documents actually tolerate this; no attempt is made
to keep the English-language Wikipedia consistent in this way.)

I simply don't think this is on the same scale as the badness of mixed
Hans and Hant (which may be downright illegible if you don't read Hant),
to say nothing of the badness of mixing proper Greek with frangovlaxika
(gr-Latn).

> the point where it is more important than the regional differences,

It may be that toniko distinctions are more important *in Greek*
than national ones, simply because national variants of Greek are
thin on the ground; I don't know.

-- 
John Cowan  [email-masked]   http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
O beautiful for patriot's dream that sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears!
America! America!  God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law!
        -- one of the verses not usually taught in U.S. schools