A proposed solution for descriptions

[Addison Phillips]

> > 
> > I don't support changing any letters in the registry. Personally:
> > I think we're best off if we just replicate whatever the 
> ISO MA sends
> > to us. Even when different ISO MAs send us something 
> different for the
> > "same thing" (as with N'Ko). If "we" have a problem with it---tell
> > *them* and let them work it out.
> 
> Well and good, but searching for "N'Ko" in the registry with either
> grep or Google will find nothing at all.  I don't think that's
> an acceptable state of affairs.
> 
So my weasel words come into play here: I don't support *changing* any
*letters* in the registry. Apostrophe vs. right-single-quote I don't have
such a problem with (and I +1ed a proposed record yesterday to that effect).
Admittedly, right there I cite N'Ko. In that case, I think putting the ASCII
apostrophe into one description will not cause the planet to spin off its
axis. We should be vaguely smart about this, not so rigid that we cannot
make good decisions. But changing Cote d'etc. we should forget. And I don't
believe that it would be *that* bad if temporarily we put the curly quote in
the registry. If someone feels gipped, they can propose an additional
description for registration (problem solved). But as a general policy:

1. Register whatever ISO 639 (etc.) send us, exactly as they send it
(possibly unbundling multiple names, ala the Old Slavonics)
2. Register additional descriptions via the consensus process (that's what
it is for), separately.

Frankly, I'll be happiest when we can go to a pure text representation. Most
user agents, tools, search engines, etc. can deal with searching plain text
given the encoding.

Addison