[tei-council] representing transliteration in @xml:lang (was Re: biblscope and imprint)

[Martin Holmes]

On 12-11-14 05:37 AM, Piotr Bański wrote:
> On 14/11/12 09:13, Lou Burnard wrote:
> [...]
>>>
>>> Alternatively, we simply remove @xml:lang entirely from this example in
>>> the Guidelines!
>>>
>>
>> I think that would be misleading, as well as bad practice.
>>
>> "ru-Latn" does the job of saying "this isn't English, despite the
>> character set" which is a lot more use than saying just "ru" which is a
>> lie.
>
> Or maybe rather "this is Russian, but don't expect the Cyrillic", which
> in this case amounts to roughly the same.

Yes. The subtag for Russian looks like this:

%%
Type: language
Subtag: ru
Description: Russian
Added: 2005-10-16
Suppress-Script: Cyrl
%%

which I interpret to mean that the default script is Cyrl; that means 
that you don't need to say ru-Cyrl, and in fact ru = ru-Cyrl. Therefore 
if we retain this example, we must supply a script subtag.

> Kevin is right that "ru" is
> underspecification, but it's very wide, so wide as to imply the default
> that isn't the case. "ru-Latn" is still underspecification, but much
> narrower, and with some consequences for machine processing.

Agreed. It's much better than nothing, and I don't think that there's a 
requirement that it be more precise. More precise would be better, and 
more processable, but since "ru-Latn" is actually used as an example in 
the W3C explanatory document, I maintain that it's at least adequate, 
and since the actual subtag required is not (yet) available, we should 
stick with it.

> Commenting on this further in the Guidelines seems a matter of taste and
> balance, possibly a footnote on the existence of many alternative
> romanized transliterations might be quite useful.

Or confusing. The example IIRC relates to bibliographic items, not 
languages or scripts. To remove the potential confusion, it could simply 
be changed to Cyrillic.

Cheers,
Martin