Re: [Ietf-languages] Forms for subtag kmpre20c

[Richard Wordingham <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, 2 Dec 2019 15:36:46 +0100
Élie Roux <[e-mail]> wrote:

> > If that's truly the case, the proper tag is und-Khmr.  
> 
> Why not. Generally speaking I think all lang tags should all have a
> macrolanguage though. Most our database is composed of Tibetan; most
> of it is Classical but we also have old and modern, but we don't care
> about the distinction in the lang tags. I certainly find und-Tibt (or
> actually und-x-ewts as we're using transliteation) quite ugly and I
> would much prefer bo to be a macrolanguage (like zh) instead of an
> individual one. But that's not a problem I can solve... In the
> meantime I'll use km as it's much more user friendly.
> 
> > You then hit the
> > problem that language tagging doesn't handle exclusions.  At least,
> > Michael Everson said it doesn't and I have no reason to disbelieve
> > him.  It also makes sense to me as a policy.  
> 
> Sure
> 
> > And this immediately undermines the previous generality, as it
> > includes things like pi-Khmr.  
> 
> What generality? I'm not following

You said that you would like to use "-kmpre20c" for Khmer script
materials that were "written in Khmer script using non-reformed
spelling: Old, middle, modern Khmer, all sorts of dialects, Pali,
Sanskrit, Chinese, etc".  Then you referenced your convention on
github, which sensibly gives "pi-Khmr" for Pali in Khmer script.

However, I may have misunderstood you.  I though you meant you would
use "km-kmpre20c", but perhaps you just meant you would suffix it to
other languages.  On closer examination I saw pi-Khmr-x-kmpre20c.  The
general view here is that the latter should not happen without explicit
sanction.

> > What about printed Khmer-script missionary texts from 1893 printed
> > in Hong Kong?  
> 
> We don't have any yet and we have no acquisition plan for such texts.
> What about them?

You wrote, "The database I'm needing subtags for is mainly
bibliographical, it has the title for each text in two flavors: the
original (old) spelling as appearing on the manuscript, and the
equivalent in modern spelling (Chuon Nath style)".  I therefore
wondered if your database were restricted to manuscripts.  

> That's what we're trying to do, but we can't expect to stop all
> operations before we get the answers, and they probably won't be there
> in the next few decades... and I need to tag my data in the meantime.

You probably need to make provision for automatically converting the
tags later.

Richard.