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

[Marko Myllynen <myllynen at redhat dot com>]

Hi,

The scheme I proposed would also be ASCII compatible; consider this example:

% CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHA
<U0428> "<U0160>";"<U0053><U0068>"

"printf \\u0428\\n | iconv -f UTF-8 -t ISO-8859-15//TRANSLIT | iconv -f
ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8" would produce Š as per System A and "printf
\\u0428\\n | iconv -f UTF-8 -t ASCII//TRANSLIT" would produce Sh as per
System B.

Thanks,

On 2018-10-05 15:00, Egor Kobylkin wrote:
> Hi Marko,
> 
> I have chosen the System B because it is ASCII compartible. System A is
> not ASCII compartible (diacritics in target).
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9#ISO_9:1995,_or_GOST_7.79_System_A
> "GOST 7.79 contains two transliteration tables.
> 
> System A
>     one Cyrillic character to one Latin character, some with diacritics
> – identical to ISO 9:1995
> 
> System B
>     one Cyrillic character to one or many Latin characters without
> diacritics
> "
> Hope this helps,
> Egor
> 
> On 05.10.2018 13:54, Marko Myllynen wrote:
>> 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