Subject: [Ltru] Re: "Obsolete" region subtags

From: "Doug Ewell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 23:45:05 -0800

Against the backdrop of threats of obstruction, let us proceed.

Randy Presuhn <randy underscore presuhn at mindspring dot com> wrote:

> Let's keep technical discussions (within the scope of our charter) on
> the WG mailing list.  In particular, since Addison Phillips and Mark
> Davis are serving as *editors* of the registry i-d, they now take
> their direction from the WG, even as we recognize their contribution
> as authors of the material that went into that -00 version, and as
> contributors to the technical discussion.

Randy is correct, and I will make sure to follow this.  The exchange I
was talking about was actually before the WG got underway.

What I had planned to do at this point was to forward my paraphrases of
Frank Ellermann's proposals to the group:

* allow non-ISO-3166 ccTLDs, such as AC, GG, JE, and UK
* remove UN numeric code 200 for Czechoslovakia
* make the canonical/alias relationship for region subtags adhere
strictly to ISO 3166-3

And we should still discuss these.  However, it appears that Frank has a
completely different suggestion now: begin a transition away from
alpha-2 region subtags like GB, and toward numeric region subtags like
826.

I'd personally like to go on the record as opposing this one.  The
alpha-2 codes, for all their imperfections, are firmly entrenched in
existing data and in the minds of users.  They have much more mnemonic
value than the numeric codes (quick, no peeking: what's the UN code for
your country?).  98% of the time, they do match the country's ccTLD, for
those who find that important.

Frank wrote:

> The draft already has many deprecated entries with pointers
> to new and stable canonical entries.

Not that many.  I count eight.

Having duplicate codes is actually something you want to do as little as
possible; for one thing, it makes tag matching more difficult.  In cases
where a code is changed and you may have data with either code, there's
little choice but to support both and map one to the other.  But I don't
think you want to do that for every country on Earth.  John is right; it
really would cause interoperability problems.  In particular, I wouldn't
worry much about GB going away or being reused any time soon (perhaps a
different example would be more convincing).

Having said that, one of Frank's earlier proposals -- make the
canonical/alias relationship for region subtags adhere strictly to ISO
3166-3 -- would actually add a few canonical/alias pairs to the
registry.  I've come to think this is actually a good idea, since it
removes one potential source of arbitrariness (real or perceived).

Speaking of which, does anyone have an official copy of ISO 3166-3 that
can be used to double-check the "deprecated" and "changed" region
subtags in the registry?  I got my information from an unofficial
source.

-Doug Ewell
 Fullerton, California
 http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/

_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 10:39:49 +0100

Doug Ewell wrote:
 
> The exchange I was talking about was actually before the WG
> got underway.

We could still find it, it's in the archive of the languages
list - not what you wrote to the editors as summary, but the
examples where draft 10 had some surprising effects for the
start dates "begin of ISO 3166" and "begin of UN numbers".

> Not that many.  I count eight

I counted some more, but less than twenty.  And about the same
number of deprecated entries without new canonical value like
sh or DD.  You've probably not counted the 7 new grandfathered
pointers.

> Having duplicate codes is actually something you want to do
> as little as possible

Yes, but it happened in the last twenty years, and the draft
wants to be persistent for centuries.  Maybe this big CS mess
was not only a bug, but also a feature, it demonstrated in fast
forward motion that we're abusing ISO 3166-1, if we use it for
"frozen" stable tags.

> I wouldn't worry much about GB going away or being reused
> any time soon (perhaps a different example would be more
> convincing).

Real examples in our earlier discussion were CS, GE, and SK.

Public ISO 3166-3 sources:  I found nothing better than the
URL you have, FOTW (flags of the world) lists the same codes
<http://www.fotw.net/flags/iso3166n.html> reported by a FOTW
user (see end of page).

The future tag reviewer could use corresponding newsletters.

                        Bye, Frank