--On Monday, November 3, 2025 11:36 +1300 Brian E Carpenter <[email protected]> wrote:
> Wondering where to jump in, and towards the end of this message > seems best, but I have read the whole thread up to date: > > On 03-Nov-25 05:12, John C Klensin wrote: >> >> >> --On Sunday, November 2, 2025 15:29 +0000 Paul Hoffman >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> On Nov 2, 2025, at 10:17, Pete Resnick >>> <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>> [Hatless] >>>> >>>> I'll give an even more likely example than John's: If some kind >>>> person at Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. gave their company name >>>> in Han characters as "华为技术有限公司", though I would >>>> find a Latin script equivalent of the Pinyin version including >>>> tone marks, "Huáwéi Jìshù Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī" helpful, >>>> because I like getting the pronunciation right, I imagine most >>>> people would not. I think ASCII-only (and perhaps English >>>> translation) is really what we're looking for. >>> >>> Do you want a must-be-ASCII policy just for the company name, or >>> also for author names? >>> >>> [author hat] >>> >>> Specific wording for the draft would be preferred over examples. >> >> I don't know if we are back to "ASCII only" in the "interpretation >> string, and can't tell Pete's preference from his example. If we >> are going that way, I'll leave to to others to propose text. If, >> instead, we don't believe an ASCII restriction there is >> appropriate (with Pete's example serving as an illustration of why >> some non-ASCII characters may be needed if a phonetic >> interpretation is intended, I believe fairly specific wording on >> the two separate issues here, with two variations on one of them, >> has already been proposed: >> >> (1) Martin's suggestion to eliminate the distinction between >> personal names and company/geographic names. The differences are >> not as great as the document implies and Pete's example shows. If >> his comments were not specific enough, that could be done by >> dropping the second paragraph of 3.1 and inserting ", or >> associated company or geographic names," after the first >> occurrence of "names" in the first sentence of 3.1, although I >> think you can come up with better ways to accomplish that. >> >> (2) Martin's suggestion was to replace "ASCII' with "Latin >> script". Pete's example illustrates, IMO, the importance of that. >> In the part of my note Pete did not quote, II expressed some >> concern about that because "Latin script" may be over-broad and >> allow reasonable people, acting in good faith to create far more >> problematic strings than the use of diacritical markings as tone >> marks that Pete suggested. > > Indeed. And in my opinion, no amount of wordsmithing in a policy > document can specify what the RPC should do in enough detail, so we > have to stay at a general level and be explicit that the RPC has the > final say (in the case of failed negotiation with the authors). > > And at the general level, I think what we can say is > > "Proper names in a non-Latin script, or in a Latin script including > unusual characters, should be accompanied by an equivalent in > normal Latin script. The RPC makes the final decision about the > Latin script version to be used." > > [So we don't have to discuss here what's 'normal' or 'unusual'.] > > Note that "proper names" covers both people and companies. Brian, FWIW, the above works for me although I hope we can find a better word than "version". I'm not sure what "version" means in the case of Latin script and it might cause even more confusion and bikeshedding. Perhaps "subset" or a rewrite to "... about the collection of Latin script characters to be used". I read this to also leave the choice of what constitutes an "unusual character" to the RPC, even, if necessary in their judgment, on a per-document basis. If others don't have that reading, some added tweaking might be needed. john john -- rswg mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
