Subject: [Ltru] Re: fon* variants

From: "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 12:20:27 -0800

A few corrections. - MD

On 12/8/06, Doug Ewell <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> Frank Ellermann <nobody at xyzzy dot claranet dot de> wrote:
>
> > I still don't like any "generic" variants, and think that extension
> > registries are a better approach.  On the other hand it's hard to to
> > develop a proper extension from scratch, so maybe experimenting with
> > fon* variants for now is a good thing.  Until somebody has the time to
> > identify rules for a future "f" extension, deprecating the registered
> > fon* variants.
>
> Michael is right on this one.  Variants like "western" applied to the
> "Western" version of different languages would violate Section 3.5
> ("change the semantic meaning") and should not be accepted.  IPA is

I disagree -- there is no general consensus on that; it was just silly to
resort to constructed terms in a foreign language to avoid having useful,
productive variants. (Might as well have had esternWay and easternYay.)

different; by design it can be applied to virtually any spoken language.
> (Note that this is not true for SAMPA, one of the many mappings of IPA
> onto ASCII; it is language-dependent.)
>
> I've pretty much given up on extensions.  The language tag people (OK,
> John Cowan) say they are for non-linguistic information, but it seems
> unlikely to me that the non-language tag people will go to the effort of
> writing an RFC and getting it through IETF, and setting up a mailing
> list.  They'll probably do what they have always done, create their own
> syntax.  Even ICU has create the ersatz variants "revised" and "posix"

The history is a bit off here. "revised" and "posix" predated 4646 by quite
some time. The Unicode CLDR project was at its most recent version, V1.4, on
2006-07-16, while RFC 4646 was only finally approved afterwards, in
September 2006.

Moreover, the Unicode CLDR project has been moving towards changing these to
be 4646 codes in LDML, as variants get encoded that can handle them (even
if, like polytonic, suboptimally). This has been communicated in several
emails on LTRU. The only remaining outlying case is POSIX, which we didn't
think the ietf-languages group would buy off on. (It basically means using
"neutral" terms corresponding to usage in computer languages). If someone
where to come up with a good way to replace that with a 4646 variant tag, I
think the CLDR group would be all ears.

In a few cases, we use private use codes for cases where 4646 is
insufficient. Those are documented in
http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/#Identifiers, and available in
machine-readable form. We also clarify which codes are to be used for
unknown or invalid codes (subtags).

There is also a transformation of CLDR locales into conformant 4646 tags
(and back): see
http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/#Identifiers . We do intends to file for an
extension, basically so that we can use something like -u- instead of
-x-ldml

The most problematic case remaining for international identifiers is
currencies, which ISO documents and maintains badly, and doesn't guarantee
stability. ZWD for example, stands for two different currencies, which
differ by a factor of 1000!!!!

instead of trying to register the former as a variant or create an
> extension for the latter.
>
> --
> Doug Ewell  *  Fullerton, California, USA  *  RFC 4645  *  UTN #14
> http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
> http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf-languages mailing list
> [email-masked]
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
>
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---

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 13:14:26 -0800

Mark Davis wrote:

>> "change the semantic meaning") and should not be accepted.
>
> I disagree -- there is no general consensus on that; it was just silly 
> to resort to constructed terms in a foreign language to avoid having 
> useful, productive variants. (Might as well have had esternWay and 
> easternYay.)

Preface those two sentences with "IMHO".

I don't personally want to reopen the "western" debate, but if you feel 
it is desirable to have a variant "foo" that means different things when 
applied to different languages, perhaps this would be a good time to 
propose changes in RFC 4646bis to reduce or eliminate the restriction 
against variants with unrelated meanings.

>> Even ICU has create the ersatz variants "revised" and "posix"
>
> The history is a bit off here. "revised" and "posix" predated 4646 by 
> quite some time. The Unicode CLDR project was at its most recent 
> version, V1.4, on 2006-07-16, while RFC 4646 was only finally approved 
> afterwards, in September 2006.
>
> Moreover, the Unicode CLDR project has been moving towards changing 
> these to be 4646 codes in LDML, as variants get encoded that can 
> handle them (even if, like polytonic, suboptimally). This has been 
> communicated in several emails on LTRU.

OK, I stand corrected on this.  I do feel that variants are the right 
place to put distinctions like monotonic vs. polytonic.

> The only remaining outlying case is POSIX, which we didn't think the 
> ietf-languages group would buy off on. (It basically means using 
> "neutral" terms corresponding to usage in computer languages). If 
> someone where to come up with a good way to replace that with a 4646 
> variant tag, I think the CLDR group would be all ears.

That's why I talked about "creating an extension for the latter," 
meaning "posix."  It is not by any measure a language variant; it does 
seem appropriate for an extension.

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:49:07 -0500

Mark Davis scripsit:

> The only remaining outlying case is POSIX, which we didn't think
> the ietf-languages group would buy off on. (It basically means using
> "neutral" terms corresponding to usage in computer languages).

That sounds very like i-default to me.

-- 
John Cowan                                [email-masked]
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, LOTR:FOTR

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 21:21:28 +0900

>That sounds very like i-default to me.

I was just thinking the same when I read Mark's mail.

But as usual, John is ahead!

Regards,    Martin.

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