Re: [Ltru] Uniqueness of variant subtags

[Peter Constable <petercon at microsoft.com>]

You lot are generating a lot of mail on a last call topic. I hope that we are moving toward stability of the draft, not trying to rush in new features at the last minute.

Martin wrote:

> I hope we can restrict this to the a very short time.
> Everybody, please comment quickly...

I agree with those who say we should not allow two records having the same subtag and the same type.

I agree with the sentiment that a subtag should have a consistent semantic. Years are relatively easy cases as the concept of 'point in time at which some significant change in conventions occurred' is pretty straightforward. (Someone mentioned the possibility of two changes happening for a given language in a given year -- that just means that, in that case, more than four-digit subtag is needed.) Beyond that, there'd be a need to be wary of the kind of fuzziness Randy fears. A case like "northern" is a clear example of a problematic case: there is a trivial sense in which "northern" would always have a consistent semantic, but that would be a vague trap that would snare us unless there were some way to make exactly clear what specific semantic is meant for each collocation.

This reminds me of issues in lexicography, in which a word form may correspond to distinct lexemes (distinct meanings), or in which a single lexeme can have multiple senses: in either case, a hierarchical organization of information is typically used to show how information is related. So, instead of

> Type: variant
> Subtag: 1901
> Description: German orthography of 1901
> Description: Uzbek transliteration of 1901
> Prefix: de
> Prefix: uz
> Comments: Good luck figuring this out.

something along the lines of

Type: variant
Subtag: 1901
Sense:
   Description: German orthography of 1901
   Prefix: de
   Reference: ...
Sense:
   Description: Uzbek transliteration of 1901
   Prefix: uz
   Reference: ...

Some said that the first record above seems reasonably clear; I concede that -- in this case; but in the general case I think there are real risks of introducing ambiguity and lack of clarity into records.

But the kind of approach in the second record above would require a lot more change than I think should be introduced at this stage. I think it very important to limit ourselves to a useful change that we can get quick closure on. To that end, I suggest

- that we have a requirement on one record per subtag-type,
- that at this point we not block records like the first one above
- that there be a general requirement on a consistent semantic for all uses of a subtag
- that there be some general cautions about risks of confusion if the intent for each particular collocation is unclear

And beyond that, that for now we leave it to the IETF-Language list and LSTR to do the right thing -- so that we in LTRU can do the right thing for us at this point, which is to close on this discussion and on the WGLC.




Peter
_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
Ltru at ietf.org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru