Registration request for new subtags for Portuguese orthographies

[Michael Everson]

On 26 Mar 2015, at 02:55, Martin J. Dürst <duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp> wrote:

> The form there (and the one at http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.languages/10392 that's officially discussed here this time) has
>   Prefix: pt
> It seems to me that (part of?) what Michael is arguing is that pt-ao1990 is very wide and fuzzy, and therefore not very useful.

Yup.

> So if Shawn (and who else?) needs pt-PT-ao1990, wouldn't it be better to register this with
>   Prefix: pt-PT
> Would we need other prefixes at this point? Could we add other prefixes if we need them later?

pt-PT and others, now.

On 26 Mar 2015, at 07:26, Shawn Steele <Shawn.Steele at microsoft.com> wrote:

> I believe that prefixing the two tags with pt-PT instead of just pt would address our immediate concern.

Seems so. But with others, now.

On 26 Mar 2015, at 11:52, Luc Pardon <lucp at skopos.be> wrote:

> If/when I adopt a spelling convention that has a word list that allows both, I fully expect a conforming spell checker to accept both and flag neither.

In which case your spell-checker hasn’t really helped you.

> It is true that I would not want my writing to "wander randomly through the options", but I still am the master of my own writing, am I not?

You are most likely using stable and standard orthographies in your daily life. I assure you, orthographic chaos is very difficult indeed. In Cornish there was Unified Cornish, and Unified Cornish Revised, and Common Cornish, and a variety of attempts at nailing down a Late Cornish. Finally there is a Standard Written Form which is in many way inaccurate and unhelpful, though better perhaps than those others, and a Standard Cornish which is really very accurate while also providing a set of variants for dialect preference. The design of those variants was carefully done, and a reader of one dialect will always know what was intended by the writer of the other dialect. 

> Are you sure that yours is not simply a knee-jerk reaction of a native speaker of a language (such as
> English) that has exactly one "right" spelling for each and every word?

My mother tongue has nothing to do with my evaluation of orthography design. (Also, English has a variety of orthographies, though apart from -ise/-ize the variations are not productive.)

> I am asking, not to be offensive, but because I fail to understand why anybody, who has actively been writing in any language that allows multiple spellings, would expect a spell checker to flag valid ones as
> invalid. To me, such a spell checker would be broken.

The scope of Dutch reforms and of the Portuguese is rather different, also because the nature of dialect in the two domains is very different. 

> By refusing them a means to tag within BCP47, you are forcing them to invent their own subtag, thereby defeating the very purpose of the registry that you're supposed to nurse.

Try not to second-guess me. 

It seems, from what João has said, and from the link Luc sent (1), that requirements might be well served by:

pt-BR-colb1945
pt-PT-colb1945

pt-BR-ao1990
pt-CV-ao1990
pt-PT-ao1990

pt-abl1943

(1) https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acordo_Ortográfico_de_1990#Resumo_da_situa.C3.A7.C3.A3o_nos_pa.C3.ADses_e_regi.C3.B5es_lus.C3.B3fonos