Re: [Ltru] Fw: I-D Action: draft-falk-transliteration-tags-01.txt

["Randy Presuhn" <[e-mail]>]

Hi -

I started out with an off-list response, but I figure this is
something worth sending to the list.

Off-list, a contributor asked:

...
> I'd love to see your input. I'd like to make sure I understand
> all the concerns. Is there any way you could forward this to the list?

My response:

Sorry, already deleted.  As I recall, the main concerns were

  (1) there already *is* support for identifying orthographies
      (remember German?)
  (2) the I-D seems to assume that transliterations always result
      in "Latin" (previous discussion on LTRU included transliterations
      to Cyrillic and Hangul, among others)
  (3) the "original orthography" is irrelevant for the transliteration
      systems I've been able to think of.  (At the same time, some
      transliteration systems are quite "lossy" and some don't do
      "round trip" very well.)  Consider also the transliteration of material
      which was originally in audio form...
  (4) The draft doesn't clearly distinguish "orthography" from "transliteration".
      This may be because the boundary between the two can be fuzzy, but even
      that is an issue that should be addressed.
  (5) How this fits in with *transcription* systems (e.g. IPA) should be
      addressed.  The boundary gets fuzzy with orthographies that are equivalent
      to phonemic representations of the language.  (e.g., Pinyin for Mandarin)
  (6) The proposed singleton usage appears broken and unnecessary.

Or something like that.  I may have forgotten something here, or, in the
process of reconstruction, thought of something I missed the first time.

Randy