LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: pinyin

[Peter Constable]

If LTRU were not considering keeping the extlang formalism, it would be conceivably feasible to deprecate “zh”. With extlang, however, I don’t see how “zh” could be deprecated. Of course, I think what Karen has in mind is that “zh-cmn” (or “zh-yue”, etc.) be used in preference to “zh” alone, but there is no mechanism to indicate that certain subtag sequences (let alone the *absence* of certain sequences) are deprecated.


Peter


From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Mark Davis
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2008 4:04 PM
To: Broome, Karen
Cc: Kent Karlsson; ietf-languages at alvestrand.no
Subject: Re: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM: pinyin

I think you see some Dark Conspiracy where there is none. My strong intention, shared I'm sure by others on this list like John, is to add the prefixes zh-cmn and cmn, once those are available.

zh-guoyu cannot be added as a prefix, since zh-guoyu-pinyin would be illegal.
zh-cmn also cannot be added as a prefix, under RFC4646

Remember, prefixes are a guide for good usage, to indicate that other values would be *inappropriate*. zh-cmn-Latn-pinyin makes sense, as does zh-Latn-pinyin. But da-pinyin *doesn't*. It is cases like the latter than the prefixes are designed to discourage.

And zh is not deprecated in RFC4646, nor is it deprecated in the current text of RFC4646bis, nor can I forsee that it would ever be deprecated.

Mark

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 3:09 PM, Broome, Karen <Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com<mailto:Karen_Broome at spe.sony.com>> wrote:
Addison writes:

>Note that 'cmn' would be added as a prefix when available.
And zh-cmn too?

This is where I think we create problems by not having a single preferred tag for each of the Chinese variants. We know in the future "zh" will not be a preferred tag, so I don't think "zh-pinyin" should be allowed today. I wonder if this tag is being registered now because the registrant intends to ignore the preferred Chinese tagging chosen by the committee in the future and knows that in the RFC 4646bis era, it's less likely that new "zh" tag variants would be allowed.

I strongly believe that this request should be associated with the "cmn" or "zh-cmn" tag ... but three valid prefixes for the same thing? Might as well throw zh-guoyu in there too. If you don't, the treatment of these tags is inconsistent. This is where I start to see this standard as something less desirable than its predecessor for most uses of this work -- it allows too many options for the same thing and the exceptions are becoming harder and harder to explain. We can see the exponential nature of these options in requests like this.

For the purposes of registration, I think we should consider "zh" deprecated. It may be a popular tag with a lot of legacy classifications, but that doesn't make it specific enough to span use across the written and spoken language identification needs of the Internet today. "Zh" is a Bad Tag and we should discourage its use moving forward. "zh-cmn" is the preferred tag for Mandarin today. If "pinyin" is a Mandarin-only variant, it should use the Mandarin tag.

Regards,

Karen Broome

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