Re: [PATCH] Locales: Cyrillic -> ASCII transliteration table [BZ #2872] re-submission for 2.29

[Marko Myllynen <myllynen@redhat.com>]

Hi,

Would it make sense to first use ISO 9:1995/GOST 7.79 System A if
possible and if not, then fall back to GOST 7.79 System B?

Implementation-wise current translit_* files have few examples where a
non-ASCII transliteration is tried first before an ASCII fallback. These
examples are from translit_neutral:

% NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE
<U202F> <U00A0>;<U0020>
% REVERSED TRIPLE PRIME
<U2037> "<U2035><U2035><U2035>";"<U0060><U0060><U0060>"

Thanks,

On 2018-10-05 13:29, Egor Kobylkin wrote:
> Keld,Marko,Rafal, other locale maintainers,
> 
> this all is written with having in mind a minimal viable fix for this
> bug asap. I want to avoid wasting maintainers time getting into
> fundamental discussions here (although for perfectly good reasons).
> 
> I see three options:
> 1. those locale maintainers that are fine with using ISO
> 9:1995/GOST_7.79_System_B cyrillic transliteration table (Ru) include it
> in their locales (see attached screenshot of the table).
> 2. those that that want to have a differing table can create their own
> variety based on the spreadsheet I have prepared
> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=8590 and include it in
> this patch.
> 3. those that want to omit a cyrillic transliteration altogether for now
> state so and just carry over the bug #2872 from the year 2006.
> 
> Does this make sense to you?
> 
> Just to be super clear on this: the patch is a stopgap _ASCII_
> transliteration table. ASCII being AMERICAN Standard Code for
> Information Interchange, that is obviously orthogonal to any
> transliteration rule of other countries. As such it is not explicitly
> targeting transliteration standards of any country.
> 
> The fact that the patch is reflecting Russian variety of ISO
> 9:1995/GOST_7.79_System_B is because a) ISO 9:1995/GOST_7.79_System_B is
> available and can be helpful to a majority of cyrillic users b) I have
> access to it including via being proficient in Russian.
> 
> It is offered to all the respective locale maintainers as a stopgap
> solution. Stopgap in the sense that it is better to have some
> transliteration than not to have any at all and carry over the bug from
> 2006. That it may be a somewhat officially correct transliteration for
> ru_RU is a bonus. In that sense I would dub the discussion on the
> correctness for other languages "offtopic". Let me know if this is not OK.
> 
> You are all are correctly mentioning the deficiencies of this approach.
> However, I couldn't find a better straightforward approach as of yet.
> Happy to hear from you as on how this could be handled.
> 
> There is a danger of being caught in the web of language/country
> differences. I propose just pruning the locales that are not comfortable
> including this current table. We can address possible solutions in the
> second wave of patching.
> 
> I am vary of getting into discussions on specific country variants just
> because of the sheer complexity of this topic. It is probably better
> addressed by respective maintainers of their locales. I do not see a
> "one fits all" solution in this first wave possible.
> 
> I would like to have this "three options plan of action" vetted first
> and then we could go to the specific detail. (Like, for instance, what
> characters should be included in to the table, and in which
> transliteration form.)
> 
> I am looking forward to your reply,
> Egor Kobylkin
> 
> P.S. specifically as to how address languages other than Ru included in
> GOST_7.79_System_B: we can take the first option left to right from that
> table (Ru,By,Uk,Bg,Mk). Then it will technically work for all those
> locales/languages but with errors where Ru supersedes their own variants.
> 
> 
> On 05.10.2018 11:20, Rafal Luzynski wrote:
>> 3.10.2018 11:32 Egor Kobylkin <egor@kobylkin.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 03.10.2018 11:19, Keld Simonsen wrote:
>>>> Hi
>>>>
>>>> Please note that translitteration of Cyrillic to latin is not universal.
>>>> There are different schemes for for example German, English and Danish, and
>>>> there is also an ISO standard for it.
>>>
>>> Thanks for your feedback, Keld!
>>>
>>> Could the locale maintainers that wouldn't like to include this patch
>>> explicitly state so here?
>>
>> I think it is about me so I must reply.  I am sorry about that and the sole
>> reason is my lack of time.  I'm just a volunteer here, that means it's not
>> my regular job to work on locale data nor anything in glibc nor in any other
>> open source project.  I do these things only in my free time which I don't
>> have much.  Of course you will see my contributions here and there but they
>> are either trivial or take me months to complete.  Your patches are on my
>> radar but I can't tell any ETA for them.  Of course, there are other people
>> around here and they are all welcome to come and join.
>>
>>> That is:
>>> - In the case that there is a different preferred cyrillic
>>> transliteration table for any specific locale their maintainers may want
>>> to point me to it so I can supply a separate table/patch.
>>> - Or they could state explicitly that for some reason they would like to
>>> exclude their locale from the patch for a default cyrillic
>>> transliteration altogether.
>>
>> As Keld wrote, there are probably separate rules for every language so
>> I don't think you should treat your rules as universal and include them
>> in every locale.  At first sight, it seems to me they work only for English
>> (as a destination locale).  Also, although it is called "transliteration
>> from Cyrillic" it seems that it covers only Russian alphabet.  What about
>> other languages which use Cyrillic alphabet but add their own diacritic
>> characters?  Think about Belarusian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Chechen, Chuvash,
>> Mari, Ossetian, Yakut, Tatar, and more.  What about languages which use
>> Cyrillic alphabet but transliterate their respective letters in a different
>> way than Russian?  For example, Russian "Ъ" is (I think) usually skipped
>> in transliteration, I think you propose "``", but when transliterating from
>> Bulgarian they usually transliterate this as "ă".
>>
>> Few remarks:
>>
>> * I think you transliterate "щ" as "shh", wouldn't "shch" be better?
>> * You transliterate "ц" as "cz", wouldn't "ts" be better?  By the way,
>>   in Polish language "cz" is a correct transliteration of "ч".
>> * You transliterate "й" as "j", this is fine in many languages but wouldn't
>>   "y" be better in English?
>> * In case of "е": how will you know if it is correct to transliterate it
>>   to "e" or "ie" or "je" or "ye"?
>>
>> These remarks are obviously incomplete, your patch deserves much more
>> attention to review.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Rafal
>>
> 


-- 
Marko Myllynen