LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: pinyin

[Peter Constable]

Even if suppress-script could be used with a variant subtag, I think it would NOT be a good recommendation for best practice to have people keep script subtags out of their tags because that info is considered redundant with the meaning of the particular variant. IMO, this is one instance of useful redundancy: I think it reasonable to assume that a lot of implementations will understand the semantics of the script subtag (those being a fairly static list known up front) but that not a lot of implementations will have much specific knowledge about the semantics of variant subtags (that list being likely to grow over the life span of a typical implementation and so not being known up front). If we want implementations to make useful choices when it comes to writing system, then I think including the script subtag is definitely best practice, even if there is redundancy. In practical terms, the script subtags *will* add useful information.


Peter


From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of CE Whitehead
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 8:16 AM
To: ietf-languages at iana.org
Cc: doug at ewellic.org
Subject: Re: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: pinyin

Hi, I am not sure that the purpose of my email was to describe the correct use of suppress script but rather was to say that I felt zh-Latn was probably the best prefix as suppress-script (correct me if I am wrong) could not be used with a variant subtag to indicate the script.

I still support zh-Latn as the prefix; I agree with Addison that multiple prefixes are possible, and I am not wholly against allowing multiple--it adds nothing to the distinction between the two Romanizations to say that the prefix is zh-Latn as the prefix for both is zh-Latn.

Alas, however, I think Frank is right; these two variants were previously identified I suppose as zh-Latn  (is that right?  I do not tag Chinese . . . ), so zh-Latn is probably the obvious prefix--there are in fact some other Romanizations that I really know nothing about but on checking know exist (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legge_romanization).





--C. E. Whitehead
> From: "Doug Ewell" doug at ewellic.org<mailto:doug at ewellic.org>

> > The solution would be to use suppress-script except that that is used
> > only for language subtags, not for variant subtags.
> >
> > A suppress-script for the language part of the tag, zh , that would
> > work here--because Latin is clearly not the default script for zh.
>
> This is not an accurate depiction of the purpose or use of
> Suppress-Script.

Oops. I thought suppress-script was used for the most commonly used script on the internet--so that that script subtag could optionally be omitted from the tag and still understood to be the script.

That's what I meant by 'default script.'

If I am wrong, my mistake.

Maybe my use of the words 'default script' was incorrect (I made the term up myself).

--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com<mailto:cewcathar at hotmail.com>


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