LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM (R4) - Pinyin

Phillips, Addison addison at amazon.com
Fri Sep 26 17:00:19 CEST 2008


> 
> On 26 Sep 2008, at 12:40, Mark Davis wrote:
> 
> > Type: variant
> > Subtag: hpin1958
> > Description: Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Mandarin Chinese
> > Prefix: zh-Latn
> 
> I do not prefer this because, as John said yesterday:
> 
> >> For every relevant langauge there is a Hanyu-Pinyin-type
> >> orthography; rather than devising individual subtags for all of
> >> these, we devise one, which when applied to Chinese signifies
> Hanyu
> >> Pinyin.
> 
> 
> I think the right way to do this is to use "pinyin" in the same way
> as "fonupa" is used, applicable to many languages. 

Then you should do your job and reject it. If nothing will convince you otherwise, waiting for others on the list to give up convincing you is effectively a "pocket veto" and is banned by the RFC. Yes, Mark will probably appeal. But time long ago expired on this request and I'm actually surprised that he hasn't appealed your failure to act.

> 
> I have however now almost been convinced that it is appropriate to
> put
> "zh-Latn" in the prefix for this and for "wadegile", though I don't
> know what you guys expect software to do when it finds the -Latn-
> omitted, as it surely will. Do you just not care?

We do care. The point of making the prefix "zh-Latn" is that the recommendation will be to use the script subtag with the 'pinyin' subtag. Users who don't do this will still have valid tags. The problem is that users who do not use the recommended form will find that their content isn't selected/matched when other users follow the recommendation and request zh-latn-pinyin.

Addison



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