LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM (R3): pinyin

Mark Crispin markrcrispin at live.com
Wed Sep 3 21:22:35 CEST 2008


Some of the most wretchedly bad technical decisions were made as the result of a majority.  Unlike political or social policy, technical decisions are best NOT made by democracies; that way ensures mediocrity at best and at worst...well the less said the better.  Even political or social policies should not be decided by majority choice alone; the worst tyrannies exist when a minority has no ability to exercise a veto.

For better or worse, the decision is Michael's; he is not our rubber stamp.  We are here to advise him.  As far as I can tell, he puts great weight upon the consensus of the rest of us, and is not arbitrary in the few cases when he chooses to do something other than what the consensus recommends.

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.



From: petercon at microsoft.com
To: mark at macchiato.com; niall.tracey at logica.com
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2008 11:50:12 -0700
Subject: RE: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM (R3): pinyin
CC: ietf-languages at iana.org



















Mark, Michael shouldn’t be making unilateral decisions; his is
only one opinion. If the majority opinion is that “zh-Latn” is better, then
that’s what he should approve.

 

 

Peter

 







From:
mark.edward.davis at gmail.com [mailto:mark.edward.davis at gmail.com] On Behalf
Of Mark Davis

Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 9:52 AM

To: Tracey, Niall

Cc: Peter Constable; ietf-languages at iana.org

Subject: Re: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM (R3): pinyin





 



As I said, I have no objection
at all to making the prefix be zh-Latn instead of just zh; I would prefer it.
It is Michael Everson who wanted "zh" instead, so perhaps you should
address him on this topic.



(For my part, I think it is more important to have the subtag registered -- and
not have this drag out forever -- than for the subtag's Prefix to be perfect;
in practice people will use Latn as a prefix anyway.)


Mark







On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 8:53 AM, Tracey, Niall <niall.tracey at logica.com> wrote:



We all know that new tags don't gain sudden acceptance overnight.
It would be one thing if there was a suppress-script for subtags -- in that
case systems could update themselves automatically. As it is, that script
information is in the free-text fields and requires human intervention to
insert into systems, so it's going to be a while coming. In legacy systems, it
may never happen.

 

If we issue advice saying that the text should be tagged
zh-Latn-wadegile, it will be rendered correctly by all properly-written
software systems.

 

If we tell people that zh-wadegile is enough, more of
them will tag text as such and systems will attempt to render it in Hanji.

 

Izh-Latn-wadegile is surely the only fault-tolerant
(userproof?) option.

Shouldn't we build fault-tolerance in at every level?

 

Níall.

 







From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no
[mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no]
On Behalf Of Mark Davis

Sent: 03 September 2008 16:35

To: Peter Constable

Cc: ietf-languages at iana.org





Subject: Re: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM (R3): pinyin



 







While I share that opinion,
there were others that objected to it. And I can live with the required prefix
being only zh; I think that reasonable implementations will also include Latn
anyway.


Mark







On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 7:00 AM, Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com>
wrote:

From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no]
On Behalf Of Doug Ewell





> Here are the proposed new records and registration forms, for a two-week

> review period.  (Sorry, guys: RFC 4646, Section 3.7.)  Eligible
to be

> added Wednesday, September 9 at 3:00 UTC, unless someone objects or

> finds a problem.

>

> ===

>

> LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION



...



> Prefix: zh



IMO this should be "zh-Latn".



More generally, it has always been my opinion that variant subtags denoting a
particular written form should always be prefixed by a script subtag except
when Suppress-Script applies.







Peter





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