Variant subtag proposal: ALA-LC romanization of Russian

[Doug Ewell]

Michael Everson <everson at evertype dot com> wrote:

>> Looks like we're in for another dogfight over the merits of "generic 
>> variants."
>
> Not so.
>
> I would happily accept alalc97 as a generic subtag that caters for all 
> of the romanization tables in the 1997 edition of the ALA-LC 
> Romaniztion Tables. It is a single reference, well-defined.

That's fine with me, but there are some on this list who believe, fairly 
strongly, that we should register only those subtags explicitly 
requested (by others, not on our own), and that we should not register 
variant subtags that apply to different languages such that the exact 
meaning of the subtag differs depending on the language.

During the discussions over Japanese Hepburn, suggestions to register 
additional subtags for Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki, and for 
romanizations of Korea, ran into the ground in part because no outside 
contributor had requested them for a real-world purpose.  This does lead 
us toward ad-hoc, inconsistent solutions (as we see now where the 
suggested "alalc97" would have to exclude Japanese), but it is the 
approach preferred by some.

--
Doug Ewell  |  Thornton, Colorado, USA  |  http://www.ewellic.org
RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14  |  ietf-languages @ http://is.gd/2kf0s ­