The mechanisms that we have developed allow us to have degrees of specificity. After all, we call something "English" even if it uses different spelling and even grammar. And this is more true of other cases: in gsw the conjugation of present tense verbs and even personal pronouns vary between Bern and Zürich. Yet for a great many purposes, perhaps the majority, it is sufficient to say "en" or "gsw".<br>
<br>It would be most useful for people, I think, to utilize this mechanism in transcriptions/transliterations as well. If we define alalc at the high level, then people who want to tag text at that level can (eg ru-Latn-alalc) Then we have have versioned variants as/if needed, eg if someone really wants to mean the 1997 version *and no other*, then ru-Latn-alalc-alalc97 can be used.<br>
<br clear="all">Mark<br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 06:55, Michael Everson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:everson@evertype.com">everson@evertype.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On 24 Nov 2009, at 14:05, Doug Ewell wrote:<br>
<br>
> In addition, subsequently added subtags for 'alalc00', 'alalc05', etc.<br>
> will not be retrieved when searching for a tag containing 'alalc97'.<br>
> This may be by design, of course, but are the differences between<br>
> revisions really expected to be so great that their subtags should<br>
> be as<br>
> different as 'scouse' and 'boont'?<br>
<br>
</div>They could. The authorities could decide to deprecate "sh" in favour<br>
of "š" for some language, or an official romanization for some<br>
language (remember the change to Pinyin, and the current differing<br>
Korean romanizations?). Only by reference to a specific document<br>
specifying the Romanization is the subtag accurate.<br>
<div class="im"><br>
Michael Everson * <a href="http://www.evertype.com/" target="_blank">http://www.evertype.com/</a><br>
<br>
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