FW: [OpenType] Language system tag for Chinantec languages?

[Levantovsky, Vladimir]

Bringing back the discussion that ran away to a different email list - part 2.

-----Original Message-----
From: listmaster at indx.co.uk [mailto:listmaster at indx.co.uk] On Behalf Of Martin Hosken 
Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2017 7:51 AM
To: listmaster at indx.co.uk
Subject: Re: [OpenType] Language system tag for Chinantec languages?

Message from OpenType list:




> I'm open to that. I wonder, though, if we should document somewhere 
> conventions for four- vs three-letter tags? So far, we've used 
> four-letter tags for 'IPPH' and 'APPH', i.e. for phonetic notation 
> systems that do not map to specific languages. Should we formalise 
> this idea that four letter tags are for language systems that do not 
> map to individual languages, but that might, as in the case of 'CCHN' 
> map to multiple languages? [This does leave a number of existing 
> three-letter tags that map to multiple ISO language codes, which we 
> would presumably carry as legacy but could supplement with 
> corresponding four-letter tags.]

I would propose that 4 letters be worked on a namespace principle. So the first letter is the namespace and the last 3 letters are the language code. So C for collections. Maybe we can revive the 6xxx for unregistered (for OT) languages from ISO639? That would save a lot of future registration work. Yes some special cases like IPPH and APPH might not fit, but hey we are big enough to come with that. Here's a starting list:

A - Alternate rendering, which would have been identified via a variant in the language tag C - Language collections. The registration should document all languages covered by the collection
6 - ISO639-3 languages otherwise unregistered.

That fits APPH well (interpreting it as a variant of IPPH). Shame that pph is not yet allocated, so we won't know whether it will cause a problem. But if pph were allocated and needed an APPH, we could register a special for that.

Yours,
Martin