Offline: Registration request for new subtags for Portuguese orthographies

joao at silvaneves.org joao at silvaneves.org
Tue Mar 24 23:08:52 CET 2015


Hi Michael,

I agree with Peter on an important part: this email exchange is not
including the requesters. I previously requested these tags and found the
process strange, felt blindsighted by it and never understood why they
were lost. I'm only participating because the current requesters did some
mistakes I also did, which made me believe that I could help with what I
learned in the last few years of following BCP 47 discussions. They should
be given a chance to answer your requests.

Best regards,
João

> IMO, this is a discussion that should be happening _on_ list: it's not
> requesting specific clarifications from the requesters (which might be OK
> done off list) but is discussing criteria by which a tag like "ao1990"
> might be deemed useful.
>
>
> Peter
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Everson [mailto:everson at evertype.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2015 10:54 AM
> To: Shawn Steele; Peter Constable; Doug Ewell; joao at silvaneves.org; Andrew
> Glass (WINDOWS)
> Subject: Re: Offline: Registration request for new subtags for Portuguese
> orthographies
>
> On 24 Mar 2015, at 15:53, Shawn Steele <Shawn.Steele at microsoft.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't think it's helpful to have this part of the discussion offline.
>
> I do, since Peter is still haranguing me about process on the public list.
> I have tried to suggest to him that that is not the problem, but he keeps
> going on about it.
>
>> We would find this option useful.  I think I understand your concerns,
>> however regardless of whether it is specific enough, I believe that this
>> tag would serve our needs, and the needs of our customers.
>
> Yes. I know. And it is part of my function to occasionally attempt to get
> people to do better, for the greater good. I have done it before, and
> successfully.
>
>> From your statements it seems like people choosing this option may not
>> know which of the features they might expect, and so their request may
>> be underspecified.
>
> This is exactly wrong. A user in BR or a user in PT might know exactly
> what features they prefer. The problem is that this subtag on its own is
> an umbrella for all the options, and no writer of Portuguese wants his
> text to wander randomly through the options. This is precisely why I said
> that "ao1990" is practically identical to a raw "pt", because it's a
> collection of features which have been used in Portuguese from time to
> time. What, "fato" and "facto" should just be identical in the
> spell-checker? That's really not how users expect spell-checkers to work.
>
> So I have asked, and I keep asking: How should this be addressed?
>
>> If another user/software developer does encounter difficulties with
>> underspecificity, I have no problem with future consideration of further
>> subtags that indicate more explicit details about the language's
>> behavior.  Then folks could use pt-ao1990-featurex-featurez if needed.
>> (or even pt-featurex-featurez.)
>
> Your reviewer encounters difficulties with underspecificity, and keeps
> asking proponents of this subtag to address that. This is nothing new. I
> have raised such questions before many times over the years. Usually
> people address them and we end up with a positive result.
>
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>
>




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