fon* variants (was: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet)

[Frank Ellermann]

Martin Hosken wrote:

> From my naive reading of 4646 I am under the impression that all
> language variants like this must be registered *per language*.

At the moment it's a SHOULD, cut-your-throat before trying to violate
that rule.  Michael just did that.  I pushed for a MUST in 4646bis
based on the observation that "generic" variants are bad and don't
exist.  At least the latter is about to change, so probably 4646bis
will stick to the SHOULD as is, or drop it.  Going to a MUST with
some exceptions would be too confusing.

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.

Frank