Re: Tibetan Ewts variant proposal (and related questions)

> Can you demonstrate any requirement of a tag that would be met by a 
> tag bo-extwylie but would not be adequately met by a tag 
> bo-t-m0-ewts...? ("I would really prefer" is not a tagging 
> requirement.)

First, a subjective argument you can ignore: I find "bo-extwylie" very
straightforward to understand even for neophytes; while I find
"bo-t-m0-ewts" much more arcane, even for me.

Now, I'll try to demonstrate a requirement. Let's forget about Tibetan
for a minute and consider Sanskrit. I can't speak Sanskrit, but when I
talk to sanskritists (which I do from time to time), I'm under the
impression that Sanskrit is a phonetic language, not tied to any
particular script. You can write Sanskrit in Devanagari, but also in
plenty of other script, even in Tibetan script (it's quite common
actually). Rules like the sandhis, etc. are phonetic rules, not
orthographic rules like the ones I am used to in French. So, my
understanding is that writing Sanskrit is just finding some conventions
to express Sanskrit, which has no native script per se. So we can have
sa-Deva, sa-Beng, sa-Tibt, etc.

Now, in the West, the way people usually write Sanskrit is IAST (other
forms exist but let's focus on this one). Someone could compose texts in
IAST directly, with no transliteration from another script. Also, there
are some diplomatic edition comparing two editions with different
scripts. So, in many cases, I would argue that if we consider
transliteration as the operation to go from one script to another, IAST
is not only a transliteration (although it started as one), it's also a
fully valid way to write Sanskrit. So I really think there should be a
sa-iast (or something on 5 letters). I don't really know how else you
would handle a text in IAST that is a diplomatic edition of a text in
sa-Deva and another in sa-Tibt... Is this something that has already
been discussed (maybe with languages other than Sanskrit)? I'm not sure
how well it applies to Tibetan or other "transliteration" schemes... but
maybe the core question (and requirement) is the following:

what happens when what was a transliteration method becomes a native way
to write?

Just for the sake of completion, what about Pali? is pali written in
Thai script a transliteration? I would say no, but if the answer is no,
why would Pali or Sanskrit written in IAST be?

Maybe I'm completely off here, but I'd be very interested to have your
comments on this issue.

Thank you,
-- 
Elie