Pending business

Peter Constable petercon at microsoft.com
Mon Sep 15 17:17:16 CEST 2008


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

> I find it hard to discount the minority view. People
> like John keep saying "People will tag zh-pinyin even
> if zh-Latn is "the" prefix in the registration.
>
> How many prefixes can be in the registration?

As many as we want. But note that the prefixes do not constitute a requirement; so, even if we specify only "zh-Latn" as a prefix users are free to use tags "zh-pinyin" or even "fr-pinyin" for that matter. Rather, the prefixes are a recommendation, so if we list just "zh-Latn" as the prefix, then we're telling people that "zh-Latn-pinyin" is preferable to "zh-pinyin" (or "fr-pinyin").


> Let's make the choice on Latn/no script and make it
> formal by putting through wadegile in one form or
> another...

Well, even John agreed to specify the prefix as "zh-Latn". So, I think we can get on with it for "wadegile".


> Semantics is a problem throughout however, given zh-cmn.
> Having said that, are we ending up with zh-cmn-Latn-pinyin
> or zh-cmn-pinyin?

Well, there are two issues: First, until 4646bis is approved we don't have the option of specifying "zh-cmn-*" as a prefix (or "cmn-*"). Secondly, you've started saying that the subtag "pinyin" should be as applicable to Tibetan etc. as it is to Mandarin, so we need to decide whether the semantic scope will be Mandarin as was requested or something broader.


Peter


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