Subject: Re: [Ietf-languages] Tibetan Ewts variant proposal (and related questions)

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 07:49:49 -0700

Élie_Roux wrote:

> So, is it the end of the discussion and is the final decision "we
> don't register transliteration schemes"?

No, we need to wait for the Language Subtag Reviewer, Michael Everson,
to make a decision.

As he has recently moved house from Ireland to Scotland and is still
trying to get things settled, this may take some time.

I have my opinions about how this should be handled, but the decision is
Michael's.
 
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org

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From: Élie Roux <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 15:56:00 +0100

> No, we need to wait for the Language Subtag Reviewer, Michael
> Everson, to make a decision.
> 
> I have my opinions about how this should be handled, but the decision
> is Michael's.

Ok! Thanks for the clarification!
-- 
Elie

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From: Hugh Paterson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 09:42:24 -0700

@Élie Roux,

Just a question about version numbers and corpora. If you were to imagine
an evolution in the transcription system from 2.0 to 3.0 would you imagine
that the encoded texts using the transcription system would all be updated.
Perhaps via a script? In some of the contexts where I work, colleagues
iterate through various orthography versions at a steady pace, this leaves
a trail of written text that does not always fit with the same parsing
rules for corpora analysis. In their cases not all the documents get
updated to the newest writing system. Arguably (and maybe preferably) in
the case of my colleagues, these are limited content texts and could use a
private use subtag. However, as I do corpora studies, it would be fantastic
if orthography descriptions were matched to tags used to encode textual
data.... It is a dream I know. But I am curious how you see this playing
out in your context.

all the best,
- Hugh

On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 7:56 AM, Élie Roux <[email-masked]>
wrote:

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> Ietf-languages mailing list
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>

---

From: Élie Roux <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 18:30:08 +0100

> Just a question about version numbers and corpora. If you were to 
> imagine an evolution in the transcription system from 2.0 to 3.0
> would you imagine that the encoded texts using the transcription
> system would all be updated. Perhaps via a script?

Well, it's a bit hard for me to answer your question without knowing the
kind of languages and transliteration you're dealing with. In Tibetan
and Sanskrit, romanizations have been fairly stable and we have never
encountered a case where we would have had to update our data.

But I think we have a few problems that may be a bit similar to what you
describe (encoding of subtleties not matched by usual bcp-47 tags). One
example would be with Sanskrit: we could have texts encoded in 3
different ways (it can happen in all scripts and romanizations):
   * no space at all (like in old manuscripts)
   * "desandhied" words separated by space (like in modern Devanagari
editions)
   * words separated by space and word compounds separated with a dash
(-) when the sandhi allows it

this is a crucial indication for corpus analysis, but we infer it with
some heuristics and conventions... Actually as I write it I realize
private subtags would make sense...

Is it the kind of issues you're asking about?

Thank you,
-- 
Elie