Tagging transliterations from a specific script

[Peter Constable]

From: ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:ietf-languages-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of Michael Everson

> Then why not revise it to add some sort of generic transliteration subtag 
> that could handle source/target transliterations dynamically? Isn't such 
> extensibility part of the rationale of this scheme? 

What is the use case for tagging content to declare that the content was in some way derived from some other written form? The declaration should be about what the nature of _this_ content _is_. It is written in a particular script, following particular orthographic conventions. The orthographic conventions for two different transliteration schemes are two different orthographic conventions. Create variant subtags for each of those conventions. That is the right way to deal with this.

The problem is that "alalc97" does not describe a particular orthographic convention; it's a reference to a document that specifies multiple orthographic conventions. The right answer in this case is either

- add additional variant subtags that get used together with "alalc97" (e.g., "...-alalc97- iskeimla") that identify the particular orthographic convetions

- add additional variant subtags, as above, but do not combine them with "alalc97"

(One possible variation on the second option could include deprecating "alalc97".)



Peter