Variant subtag proposal: ALA-LC romanization of Russian

Phillips, Addison addison at amazon.com
Wed Nov 18 16:48:40 CET 2009


> > For my needs, this approach would be sufficient. Indeed, would it
> be a
> > workable short-term solution to change my variant subtag request
> to
> > the subtag "alalc97", which could be processed on its own merits
> in
> > the short term (with only the prefix ru-Latn), then modified to
> > include other possible prefixes (cs-Latn, tt-Latn, etc.) if the
> > community so decides?
> 
> It would be easy enough to specify the range of use for alalc97 now.

I'm not so sure.

If a subtag has Prefix fields, then it should try to list the full range of appropriate prefixes. This may be a quite lengthy list and difficult to maintain. If it has *no* prefix, then it is what we are calling a "generic variant". Lack of a prefix should not imply that a subtag is useful with every possible language tag. It merely means that the registry does not specifically recommend a fixed set of language tags for use.

> 
> > I also have a slight concern that a broadly defined "alalc97"
> subtag
> > would be overlap with existing romanization variants; to draw
> from the
> > most recent romanization discussion, text in the LOC Hepburn
> > romanization of Japanese could be marked as either
> > jp-Latn-hepburn-heploc or jp-Latn-alalc97.
> 
> Then we specify the range of use for alalc97 now, and explicitly
> omit Japanese since it is already covered.

I would prefer, as noted, to deprecate the existing subtag 'heploc' instead. Deprecation does not make the subtag illegal. It provides a mapping to a Preferred-Value.

> 
> > Similarly, if a new set of ALA-LC romanization tables is released,
> but it differs only in its
> > treatment of a few languages, would we then have identical text
> that can be marked equally well as ru-Latn-alalc97 or ru-Latn-
> ala09 ?
> 
> Then alalc09 is only registered for use with the changed (or new)
> languages.

Note that, assuming 'alalc97' is not a generic variant and has Prefix fields in its record, wholesale removal of Prefixes is not permitted (RFC 5646, Section 3.1.8), nor is there a mechanism for deprecating only certain uses of a subtag. However, a comment field could be inserted guiding users towards 'alalcXX'. If 'alalc97' is generic, then a new subtag could have prefixes or could also be generic with a note to provide guidance on usage.

The registry does not exist to completely remove all possible choice (and thus all possible error) in language tagging, so I tend to favor rather less documentation in the registry.

Addison

Addison Phillips
Globalization Architect -- Lab126

Internationalization is not a feature.
It is an architecture.





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