Hello everybody,
Many thanks to Pete for a very good example.
With the proposed policy, we would allow both "Hú Jǐntāo"
and something like "胡锦涛 (Hú Jǐntāo)", depending on the preferences of
the author. And that should be just fine.
With respect to "Latin", my understanding from the discussion is that we
mean the Latin script as defined in Unicode. I think any restriction in
our policy to "Western European" would be a bad idea, because it might
exclude some cases from e.g. Africa.
On the other hand, the chance of such cases (not authors from Africa,
but authors with names containing Latin characters that we wish we would
have eliminated) is excedingly low. Any effort spent on trying to find a
different line between what's allowed and what not would be a waste of
time. I have full trust in the RPC if we ever get there (which I expect
we don't).
Regards, Martin.
On 2026-04-22 12:44, Pete Resnick wrote:
Trying to keep my chair hat on, but perhaps slipping into commentary. My
apologies if I slip too far:
On 21 Apr 2026, at 21:13, John C Klensin wrote:
If Christian will forgive me, let me state his position a tad
differently. "ASCII" is too restrictive. "Latin script" much too
general. If what we really mean is "Latin script as used in Western
European languages and writing systems narrowly derived from that
subset", it would be desirable to say that, with anything else
treated the way the documents treats non-Latin names, i.e., with the
the expectation of an alternate name in that subset. We don't have a
convenient name for that "as used in Western European" subset, so we
end up handwaving and/or relying on the knowledge that no one using a
name outside that Western European subset has written and RFC yet and
therefore we assume they won't in the future.
I think that's right, but I think it's even hand-wavier than you put it:
If the former president of China, Hú Jǐntāo, wanted to start publishing
RFCs, I think we would all be fine with him using the Pinyin form of his
name as I just did without giving it an alternative, even though as far
as I know neither "ǐ or "ā" is used in any "Western European" language.
(I think "ā" is used in some Northern European places.) And I wouldn't
be surprised if we could come up with weirder such examples. So I think
that Christian is correct that this is an "I know it when I see it" kind
of thing. In the end, the RPC (and perhaps the RSAB) may go looking for
advice for something novel.
I can live with simply giving the RPC the authority and discretion to
decide what is allowed without an alternative in the Western European
subset (or Latin Script more generally) and what alternatives are
permitted, but it would be good if all of us understood that the is a
certain amount of handwaving -- and risk of the RPC and RSAB getting
drawn into some nasty disagreements -- involved.
I don't think the alternative is any better: If we try to give come up
with a sharp policy statement on this beyond, "If it's not Latin, it
needs an alternative in Latin, and with the rest the RPC should do their
best to do what the author prefers", I think for all our effort we will
end up just being hand-wavy anyway and the RPC and RSAB will end up in
the same position. I'd like to think that's why the WG was content with
the current text (with more "affirmation by silence" than makes me
completely comfortable, but such is life), and why neither you nor
Christian came up with any text to make the WG significantly happier.
pr
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