pinyin (and wadegile) request has gotten derailed

[Peter Constable]

I completely don't understand how Mark's request has gotten derailed. He requested to register the variant subtag "pinyin" to denote Hanyu Pinyin. After some discussion, it was made clear that he (and others) intended this to be specifically for Mandarin. On Aug 25, Michael indicated he approved the request to register "pinyin" to denote Hanyu Pinyin. On Aug 25, Mark resubmitted a registration form that was explicit that this was to denote "Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Mandarin Chinese". On Aug 26, Michael said in response to that re-submission "[This] can be processed now, in my opinion." The only reason this was initially delayed any further was that I objected to the prefix having been changed from "zh-Latn" to "zh", an objection that several others supported. It was my impression that by Sept 5 a consensus was forming to have the prefix be "zh-Latn". That should have closed all open issues.

Then, all of a sudden this past Sunday (Sept 7), Michael contradicted his prior approving position by suggesting that "pinyin" not denote specifically "Hanyu Pinyin romanization of Mandarin Chinese", but rather that it should denote a range of orthographic conventions that are used for various languages, that are sometimes referred to as "pinyin", and that bear some resemblances to Hanyu Pinyin. This was fundamentally changing the what was requested, going back over a topic that had been discussed and regarding which several people had stated strongly that the subtag should denote the specific orthography used for Mandarin.

I think in fairness to Mark, we should get his request back on track. If it would unblock certain concerns some may have, perhaps changing the subtag to "hpinyin" might help -- I don't know. But one way or another, let's please get this back on track.



Peter