Dear Maksym Polyakov,

     The Ukrainian official Ukrainian-English
transliteration scheme for rendition of proper names:

         http://www.rada.kiev.ua/translit.htm

indeed seems to give grounds for further adjustments of the
tentative ASCII-Cyrillic transcription scheme.

     But first let me inderline one fundamental difference
between the two schemes.

     The official transliteration aims (I surmise) to
assure that when one Ukrainian name is transliterated by
two agencies the results are the same.  That assures that
a transliterated Ukrainian name on a French visa should
coincide the the transliteration of the same name for an
international driver's licence.  It is not required that
the one always be able to reconstruct the exact Ukrainian
spelling from the transliteration. In other words it need
not be (and is not) 100% faithful.

     On the other hand, I require ASCII-Cyrillic
to be 100% faithful so that machines can be relied on
to do conversions without human proofreading.

     Notwithstanding, both aim to be as comfortable as
possible for both reading and typing.  Naturally, I would
like Ukrainian ASCII-Cyrillic to be almost as comfortable as
the official transliteration, and indeed as similar to it as
possible, all other things being equal.

     With that in mind, here is *one* seemingly advantageous
revision of Ukrainian ASCII-Cyrillic:

     Use G (not 'G) for \CYRGUP
     Use 'G (not G) for \CYRG

The motive is that \CYRGUP seems to be used for the
hard G of English and Russian.  Here is the official doc
supporting this (using cp1251 for 8-bit cyrillic):

 -------------------
TeX        Ue Translit    Notes     Examples

\CYRG      H,gh           H -- in most cases,
                          gh -- when recreating the combination "çã"
                                   Ãàäÿ÷ --> Hadiach,
                                   Çãîðàíè --> Zghorany

\CYRGUP    G                       ¥àëà´àí --> Galagan
 -------------------

And likewise your comment:

Ukrainian    Russian   Byelorussian     Sound

\cyrg        -          -               German h
\cyrgup      \cyrg      \cyrg           g

A more radical choice might be \cyrg <=> 'h !?


      The vowels probably need further revision; your table
and the translit table show that this is treacherous ground!
At least I am encouraged to believe that the present:

        \cyrie <=> 'e
        \cyryu <=> 'u
        \cyrya <=> 'a

are ideal.

          Cheers

              Laurent Siebenmann


 > To: topo.math.u-psud.fr!lcs@edison.nauu.kiev.ua
 > Message-Id: <2.07b5.110IV.G1QO5L@pcomp.nauu.kiev.ua>
 > From: "Maksym Polyakov" <mpoliak@pcomp.nauu.kiev.ua>
 > Date: Sun,  1 Oct 2000 09:46:33 +0300 (MSD)
 > Return-Receipt-To: mpoliak@pcomp.nauu.kiev.ua
 > Subject: Re: ASCII-Cyrillic Ukrainian style
 >
 > Dear Laurent,
 >
 > 30-Sep-2000 18:32 Laurent Siebenmann wrote:
 >
 > > 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?
 >
 > Letters that prononced differently:
 >
 > Ukrainian           Russian         Byelorussian
 > \cyri               \cyrery         \cyrery          ~ i in this
 > \cyrii              \cyri           \cyrii           ee in tree
 > \cyre               \cyrerev        \cyrerev         a in man
 > \cyrie              \cyre           \cyre
 > \cyryi              \cyrishrt\cyri  \cyrishrt\cyri
 > \cyrg               -               -                German h
 > \cyrgup             \cyrg           \cyrg            g
 > \cyrsftsn\cyro      \cyryo          \cyryo
 > \cyrishrt\cyro      \cyryo          \cyryo
 > -                   -               \cyrushrt        w in work
 >
 > Maksym Polyakov.
 >
 > PS. It appears that my last name should be written Poliakov :-)