[Fwd]: Response to Mark's message]

[Peter_Constable at sil.org]

Michael Everson on 04/10/2003 06:39:15 AM:

> >>  IPA is a special use of Latin, but it's still Latin.
> >
> >Perhaps what is needed is a notion of "script subsets", which would
> >include Hans, Hant, and Ipal.  In this way we could clearly discriminate
> >between, say, English in ordinary orthography (en) and in IPA
transcription
> >(en-ipal).
>
> But why?

Just as Mark and others have a pressing need for zh-Hans vs. zh-Hant, I
have a very pressing need for en(-Latn) vs. en-Lipa -- and likewith with
over a thousand other languages. Our software developers need to be able to
track different written forms of language data in the software tools they
are building for linguistic and anthropological research, and these written
forms are regularly going to include one or more practical orthographies
but also phonetic transcription (usually IPA, though some use other
conventions). For data exported into XML, these distinctions will have to
be tagged with RFC3066bis-based tags. And, of course, they'd really like
the programming environments they're working with (whether it be .Net, ICU
or whatever) to support the same distinctions, and the trend for those
programming environments seems to be toward adopting RFC 3066 (or a
successor thereof). So, it would help if these distinctions were supported
in RFC3066bis.



- Peter


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Peter Constable

Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
Tel: +1 972 708 7485