To: CyrTeX-en@vsu.ru, lcs@topo.math.u-psud.fr,
	mpoliak@pcomp.nauu.kiev.ua
Subject: Re: ASCII-Cyrillic Ukrainian style
Message-Id: <E13fPYX-0001Ru-00@topo.math.u-psud.fr>
From: Laurent Siebenmann <lcs@topo.math.u-psud.fr>
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 18:32:09 +0200


Dear Maksym Polyakov,

Thanks for particularly constructive suggestions.

 > Official transliteration rules for Ukrainian
 > defines, among others,
 >   \cyrii -> i
 >   \cyri  -> y
 >   \cyryi -> yi

I am astonished to hear that there exists an official
transcription of Ukrainian whereas there is no sign
of such a thing for Russian.

Could you provide a full spec and/or an URL?

 > This is based on how letters are pronounced
 > in Ukrainian language.

Perhaps you could specify how these 3 are pronounced -- by
reference to Russian or English or whatever.  Are Russian
\cyri and Ukrainian \cyri different sounds?

I recently encountered an URL where one can listen to
Macedonian Cyrillic sounds! That reminds me that anyone with
a Sound-Blaster card on a Wintel machine has the means to
record the Ukrainian vowel sounds etc. in a compact (MP3
mono?) form and even post them on internet (and to me!).

 > If you make your system for Ukrainian incompatible with
 > Russian anyway, why not
 >
 >          use i for \cyrii and y for \cyri ?

No problem, assuming the result is globally better.  Indeed,
here is the payoff for letting Ukrainian go its own way. I
would just change a couple of octets in the tables of
email-ru.tex.

 > Also, for \cyryi  "i would look more natural.

That might be nice in itself. But it could be a costly
change:-
   -- the ASCII character  "  is most often a double
keystroke <<Shift '>>. An inconvenience to typists.
   -- a new escape character  "  would leave a sticky
residue of syntactical complication: should " followed by i
be rendered as ""i or as '"i or ... ??
   -- a new escape character " (in addition to the present
trio (' ! \) requires a mass of macros in "email-ru.tex"
equal to that for ' and quite a few more still to handle
interactions of " with '.
   -- should Russian \cyrerev, then similarly be `e rather
than 'e, thus requiring a fifth escape character?

In short,  "i for \cyryi  looks to me like Pandora's box.
Maybe best leave it as a suggestion for to some later
revision of email-ru.tex in which 'i would remain an option.

Executive summary:-

 letter   Translit  ASCII-Cyr-1st-try   2nd-try   3rd-try

 \cyrii      i            'i             i          i
 \cyri       y             i             y          y
 \cyryi      yi            y             "i         'i

Maybe "3rd-try" is best for now; after all, 'i  has the
requisite 1+1=2 dots on \cyryi while  "i  has 2+1=3 !

               Cheers

                  Laurent Siebenmann


PS. "-ru" now means "Russian-Ukrainian", OK?