Proposed new variant subtag: pre1917

[CE Whitehead]

Hi.
Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Wed Sep 8 09:57:19 CEST 2010

> On 8 Sep 2010, at 08:44, Avram Lyon wrote:
>> For my purposes, I really just need to be able to mark texts that use 
>> the post-1917 orthography, but since that is the current orthography, I>> can't very well insist that the tagging of all Russian texts produced 
>> today employ a variant subtag.

> I strongly, strongly, recommend that you propose subtags for what the 
> non-post-1917 orthographies ARE, not a subtag for what modern orthography> is NOT. I know, for your purposes you may just need to be able to say
> "not modern" but our subtags don't work negatively.
>> The problem is that there are additional orthographic changes in the 
>> 18th century, after Peter's 1708 reforms, as some of the letters
>> abolished in 1708 were re-added by the mid-1700s. Additionally, more
>> letters fell into disuse before 1917.

> So you have Peter 1708, something 1750, and something with more disused 
> letters, in addition to modern post-1917 orthography. So you need three 
> subtags.
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/

I agree with Michael that a subtag should not be defined by what it is not.
 
I also agree with Doug's post that a year is not a particularly good identifier for a variant.
 
One question:  are there are sufficient differences in all three orthographies to warrant three subtags 
(of course even a trivial difference can be catalogued with a variant subtag, if that is what you need).  If so, then one subtag, maybe [pre1917] would do.

Best,
C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com