Registration request for new subtags for Portuguese orthographies

João Miguel Neves joao at silvaneves.org
Wed Mar 25 16:49:31 CET 2015


Hi Michael, 

Can you explain me which variants are you referring to? The objective of the AO1990 was a country-less version of pt, as was the objective of COLB1945. There are now words that can be written in two forms which couldn't before in different countries. Most rules are actually about reducing the number of ways to write a word (the elimination of the umlaut, of the accented gu, the clearer rules on hyphenation, etc). Saying that it was just a bucket where everything is thrown is misrepresenting it. That was done,but it was just one part of the process, shows itself in the end result, but doesn't represent all the end result. 

Should we have subtags for each of the possible set of rules? Why wasn't that done in other orthographic reforms where there were actual instances of usage of different sets of rules? 

I don't understand what the objection is, so I can't respond to it with either examples or rules. Could you please clarify?

Thanks, 
João 

On 25 March 2015 09:35:30 GMT+00:00, Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com> wrote:
>On 24 Mar 2015, at 22:50, Shawn Steele <Shawn.Steele at microsoft.com>
>wrote:
>
>> I hear that "ao1990 is a collection of features that are used from
>time to time".  Presumably it is a different collection of features
>from "pt”.  
>
>Firstly, a presumption like this is dangerous. Do not presume —
>especially if you do not know. It’s better to resort to facts. 
>
>> I find that sufficient to be useful for my purposes.
>
>It is not a different collection. All of the conventions used can be
>found in regional varieties of Portuguese. ao1990 is a bucket into
>which they are dumped, for the user (individual or national) to sift
>through in terms of preference. 
>
>> I would like be able to provide a mechanism for content to be tagged
>as coming from perhaps one set of optional features (pt) or another set
>of optional features (pt-ao1990). 
>
>Examples, please. If you know what you are talking about, give
>examples. Otherwise, well, are you just guessing?
>
>> Should users need finer control over which individual features they
>need, then other mechanisms may be necessary.  If there are truly that
>many discrete features users may want to choose, that could even be
>checkboxes on a spell checker.
>
>I have already said, and Kent Karlsson agreed:
>
>>> A user in BR or a user in PT might know exactly what features they
>prefer. The problem is that this subtag on its own is an umbrella for
>all the options, and no writer of Portuguese wants his text to wander
>randomly through the options. This is precisely why I said that
>"ao1990" is practically identical to a raw "pt", because it's a
>collection of features which have been used in Portuguese from time to
>time. What, “fato" and "facto" should just be identical in the
>spell-checker? That's really not how users expect spell-checkers to
>work.
>
>
>Sorry, Shawn, but trying to dodge this key issue (“leave it for later”)
>is not a good idea, in my judgement. 
>
>> However that level of detail is not the same as my current problem,
>which is to be able to make a general distinction between two grossly
>different variations.  For that need, the current proposal would
>suffice.
>
>I don’t understand. Ao1990 mixes lots of variants (more than English
>has for instance) and isn’t any different really from un-subtagged
>“pt”. An analogy would be an “Accord” which mixed
>GB/IE/NZ/AU/CA/Oxford/US conventions — this would be no different from
>un-subtagged “en”. 
>
>> Furthermore I don't see how allowing this variant would preclude any
>future mechanism that would enable the specificity you are expressed
>concern about.  Worst case it seems like this would fall out of use
>&/or be ignored.  (And applications are already expected by RFC4646 to
>ignore subtags they don't know about).
>
>I don’t want to revisit this later. I want you professionals to grasp
>the nettle and respond to my request: How are you going to enable a
>user in BR or a user in PT to indicate what variants of ao1990 they
>want? 
>
>> What I have not heard is any suggestions of alternate solutions that
>would enable my need to differentiate between multiple variations of
>Portuguese (pt-PT to be exact) and also address your concerns.  I'd be
>totally happy to entertain any alternative tags that would help me have
>multiple versions coexist.  As far as I personally care it could be
>pt-alternate (though I imagine others would find that a little too
>vague).
>
>This is EXACTLY the discussion I want us to have about this. 
>
>Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>
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-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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