NEW-MODIFY LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION for "Ethi"

Doug Ewell dewell at adelphia.net
Thu Jun 29 07:58:56 CEST 2006


Michael Everson <everson at evertype dot com> observed:

> Consensus is not unanimity.

I'd like to see if we can reach consensus on what to do with Ethiopic 
first, and perhaps we can extend the decision and the logic behind it to 
other apostrophe and modifier-letter cases.

Currently we have an entry in the Registry that looks like this:

--
Type: script
Subtag: Ethi
Description: Ethiopic (Ge&#x2018;ez)
Added: 2005-10-16
--

Note in particular the Description field, identified here as [A]:

[A]  Description: Ethiopic (Ge&#x2018;ez)

This reflects the original entry in ISO 15924 for this script, using 
that character U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK.  This listing has been 
changed in ISO 15924 to use U+02BB MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA instead, 
leading to the following proposed change in the description:

[B]  Description: Ethiopic (Ge&#x2BB;ez)

It would also be possible to include an ASCII fallback description, with 
the character in question changed to U+0027 APOSTROPHE, as shown below:

[C]  Description: Ethiopic (Ge'ez)

The question is this:  Which Description field(s) from the set {A, B, C} 
should be used in the Registry entry for this script, and (optionally) 
in what order?  Bear in mind that the order of Description fields makes 
no difference in principle, but in practice some users may view the item 
listed first as "preferred" in some way.

If everyone would state their preference for this specific case, along 
with a brief explanation of *why* it is your preference -- even if you 
have already made this clear in the general case -- we should be able to 
determine a list-wide consensus.  My preference is for items B and C (in 
that order); that is, changing the existing description to match the 
underlying ISO standard, discarding the original as irrelevant, and 
adding the ASCII fallback for ease in typing and searching.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California, USA
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/




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