Ietf-languages Digest, Vol 81, Issue 11

[Frank Bennett]

Doug:

> Thus my original question remains: in what way does the Description
> field "Hepburn romanization" make it unclear whether the subtag refers
> to a specific variety of Hepburn or for a blanket covering all of them;
> and to the extent any confusion exists, how critical a tagging problem
> does this cause?
...

Randy:

Your own posts in this thread suggest that it is at least ambiguous between
the romanizations known as "Hepburn" romanizations following the same
principles, whatever those might be.  All I'm suggesting is that if it is to be
a catch-all (of either kind) then we should be explicit.  We have other
examples like this, such as "gem", and I have argued that they do have
a legitimate (if highly limited) use.  But since no one else seems to be
concerned about this, I'll shut up.

Me:

If it will serve the cause, I'll be happy to make two further filings,
based on the transliteration rules of two variants of Hepburn that are
well-defined and available on the Net -- the system from J.C.
Hepburn's 1886 dictionary, and the system used by the Library of
Congress.  For my own immediate purposes this level of specificity
won't be needed, but having subvariants in place from the start would
make it very clear that further ones can be registered, and that
greater precsion is possible where it is required.

It's really not much trouble.  Shall I go ahead and prepare those
additional submissions?