Locale bringup and barriers for entry

[Marcel Schneider via CLDR-Users]

> Is the label “Minimal Pairs” misleading?

I’m now seeming able to answer my question:
IMO the misconception about what CLDR is supposed to do for ordinals is fueled by the way the data 
is represented in the charts and in the LDML sources. While English has a comprehensive list of all
existing ordinal inflections, French does not, and that seems to be what may make people believe that 
some data is missing, and that “the supplemental data is […] failing.”

Mark Davis wrote:

> the translator is responsible for the text, and accounting for gender. The examples given are thus irrelevant. 

So the header should not be “Minimal Pairs” but just “Examples” again.
As of the provided text, it could be stripped off, and abstract rules be put in its place.
That could be even more useful, as demonstrated by the category "special2" in the French example below:

Eg for French:
<ordinal category="default">Ordinal abbreviation is built by appending default ordinal indicator to the digit.</ordinal>
<ordinal category="special1">Ordinal 1 has peculiar inflection.</ordinal>
<ordinal category="special2">Ordinal 2 has peculiar inflection when designating rank.</ordinal>

For Italian:
<ordinal category="default">Ordinal abbreviation is built by appending default ordinal indicator to the digit.</ordinal>
<ordinal category="special1">Vowel of article may be elided if number long form starts with a vowel, even if number is short form.</ordinal>

For English:
<ordinal category="default">Ordinal abbreviation is built by appending default ordinal indicator to the digit.</ordinal>
<ordinal category="special1">Ordinal 1 has peculiar inflection.</ordinal>
<ordinal category="special2">Ordinal 2 has peculiar inflection.</ordinal>
<ordinal category="special3">Ordinal 3 has peculiar inflection.</ordinal>


That’s at least what the statements made so far appear to boil down to.

But given some of these rules may be lengthy (eg for category "special1" in the Italian example), 
CLDR may be better off by providing sample text. That’s tricky however, as parsing sample text 
while being aware of what it is to mean, and what it is not, may be non-obvious.

That brings back to what I tried to suggest when arguing in some way that
a system of rules is more straigtforward than a collection of samples, 
especially when provided not for teaching humans, but for informing processes.

But given what I’m suggesting to do is to reengineer that part of CLDR, I’ve 
little hope that anything will be changed. 

There’s even no need for change if really CLDR users are happy with the actual state of the art.


Regards,

Marcel