Ordinal Minimal Pairs

[Marcel Schneider via CLDR-Users]

CLDR features short forms of ordinals in an element called <minimalPairs> in /main/.
About this, new information has been linked in the aforementioned e-mail as a warning for vetters:

http://cldr.unicode.org/index/cldr-spec/plural-rules#TOC-Determining-Plural-Categories

We’re urged not to merely translate what is found in English if that doesn’t account for what we have 
in our locales, and to file a ticket whenever the required data exceeds what can be done in SurveyTool.

For instance it seems that we need some new attributes if CLDR should provide all forms of ordinal 
indicators used in French. Please see ticket #11302:

http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/ticket/11302

My concern is whether there is a demand on CLDR user side for complete sets of ordinal indicators 
including plural forms, or whether the data can be limited to what is typically used in GPS.

Another point of concern is about formatting and display. Regular ordinal indicators in French and 
a set of other Latin script using languages are superscripted, and require the use of preformatted 
superscript letters in plain text, ie the data format of CLDR (inside LDML), to be truly Unicode 
conformant wrt accuracy and interoperability. Depending on font size, an implementation may 
convert these superscripts to base letters, but I think CLDR should not enforce that by default.

This is a call for feedback to the attention of the industry and everyone involved and/or interested 
in CLDR.


I wish to use this occasion to apologize for the outburst of wrath in my past e-mails [1] [2] about 
SurveyTool. In fact the set of converging misadventures is not complete without what I did not tell, 
and that is about varying efficiency of its GUI depending on the sections we’re working on. Please see:
http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/ticket/11250
http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/ticket/11253
I highly recommend using SurveyTool’s upload functionality whenever submitting and voting by 
clicking and typing gets wearisome, as opposed to upstream use of a plain text editor.

Regards,
Marcel
[1] http://unicode.org/pipermail/cldr-users/2018-July/000808.html
[2] http://unicode.org/pipermail/cldr-users/2018-July/000809.html