Why Suppress-Script exists (was: Re: Language subtag modification request: frr Suppres-Script Latn)

[Doug Ewell]

Michael Everson <everson at evertype dot com> wrote:

>> All that Suppress-Script says is that when you are dealing a
>> "normal" case like English in Latin or Portuguese in Latin, and not
>> working with a "comparison" situation as above, the "Latn" script
>> probably does not add information and should therefore be omitted.
>> This is similar to saying that the region subtag in "pon-FM"
>> probably does not add information and should therefore be omitted.
>
> Why isn't there a "Suppress-Region" then?

To add to John's response, and as Ira pointed out, the script subtag (if 
any) is inserted between language and region.  Implementations 
(software) that use the simplistic "left-prefix" matching scheme (ask if 
you need that explained, Michael) will not find a match between "es-MX" 
and "es-Latn-MX".  Suppress-Script was intended specifically to help 
with this problem.  Region doesn't have this problem since it's always 
appeared after language.

Better matching schemes, such as those found in the upcoming (one hopes) 
matching draft from LTRU, would identify the individual subtags --  
language, script, region, variant, etc. -- and would indeed find a match 
between "es-MX" and "es-Latn-MX".

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