Last call for ISO 15924-based updates

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Mon Mar 16 10:58:01 CET 2009


On 16 Mar 2009, at 09:18, Lang Gérard wrote:

> From messages of Peter Constable, or even from Addison Phillips,  
> that is very honestly signalling himself as "Unicode Partisan" and  
> marks a formal reluctance about "Zinh" by writing "None of that  
> makes 'Zinh' useful in a language tag, and adds"It might make a good  
> case for a comment to that effect, as Doug has suggested", I would  
> say that we have a solid basis to build a comment that seems more  
> than necessary.

I disagree. The statement of what Zinh is in the registry for is  
already in Doug's draft. There is no reason to add an imperative  
statement telling users of the registry Not To Use It.

> To be more specific, "Zinh" is exactly for me, compared to  
> "zxxx" (or "Zyyy" and "Zzzz" inside ISO 15924, and also "mul", "mis"  
> and "und" inside ISO 639-2), what is called in french "La goutte  
> d'eau qui fait déborder le vase".

Well, don't use it if you don't want or need to. Your dislike for  
these codes has nothing to do with ISO 15924, which operates at a  
higher level of abstraction than does the subtag registry.

> This is another way to express my previous "Nul ne peut se pévaloir  
> de sa propre turpitude", that is, as I explained in a message to  
> Michael Everson, an old latin adage used by lawyers, whose intended  
> meaning in this case is "It is not the case that, because you  
> committed a first error (eventually minor, that can be understood or  
> even forgiven, like "Zxxx") that you can be allowed to commit a  
> second error (eventually a bigger one, like "Zinh")".

Yes, well, the sentiment is not very polite, is it? Thanks for  
mentioning it again.

Adding Zinh to ISO 15924 was not a mistake, any more than adding Zxxx  
was. If the codes are not useful to you, do not use them. Criticism of  
the ISO 15924 JAC or of

> May be "Zinh" is not directly a "sin", but it is at least a "trick",  
> and in all case it is far more out of the spirit of "Code for the  
> representation of names of script" that a proposition like "Zipa",  
> for International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that was refused by ISO  
> 15924.

The IPA is a specialized orthography of Latin, not a script.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com



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