Subject: [Ltru] Re: Åland

From: Marion Gunn <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:41:04 +0000

Exactly. So the obvious solution is for both UK and GB to be
accommodated in ISO 3166, unless you can find a good reason to  oppose
that. Can you?
mg

Scríobh Jon Hanna:
> 
> ISO 3166 (part two of which is
> > currently under review), which equates GB ('Great Britain') to a
> > higher-level territory (UK) of which it is only a part ('The United
> > Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland') and which ignores the
> > fact that the e-mail territorial address identifier for the entire
> > territory is actually .UK (as in www.bbc.co.uk, smo.uhi.ac,uk,
> > www.qub.ac.uk, www.cadw.wales.gov.uk, etc., etc.).
> 
> Much like the way Shakespeare often got it wrong when he wrote something
> I would quote.

-- 

Marion Gunn * EGTeo (Estab.1991)
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn, Baile an 
Bhóthair, Co. Átha Cliath, Éire.
* [email-masked] * [email-masked] *

_______________________________________________
Ltru mailing list
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https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru

---

From: Jon Hanna <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:04:06 +0000

> accommodated in ISO 3166, unless you can find a good reason to  oppose

There is no need to encode Great Britain in ISO 3166. It is not a 
sovereign state separate from the United Kingdom, nor has there been any 
desire expressed on the part of the British to have Great Britain so 
encoded.

---

From: Marion Gunn <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:09:15 +0000

But that is already been encoded there (as GB); the code 3166 fails to
encode is the e-mail domain (UK). 
mg

--

---

From: Jon Hanna <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:39:15 +0000

Marion Gunn wrote:
> But that is already been encoded there (as GB);

The United Kingdom has already been encoded there (as GB). Great Britain 
has not. A cursory glance at ISO 3166 confirms this.

  the code 3166 fails to
> encode is the e-mail domain (UK). 

ccTLD names are not in scope for ISO 3166.

---

From: Marion Gunn <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:30:28 +0000

Scríobh Jon Hanna:
> sovereign state separate from the United Kingdom...

Yes, I guess we all have to agree with you on the above point.

> has not. A cursory glance at ISO 3166 confirms this...

Exactly - only a cursory glance! 

Only look beyond that and see how reality requires 'UK' be included in
ISO 3166 to accommodate the actual fact (reality) that the e-mail
territorial address identifier for the entire territory (Great Britain
_and_ Northern Ireland) is actually .UK (as in www.bbc.co.uk,
smo.uhi.ac,uk, www.qub.ac.uk, www.cadw.wales.gov.uk, etc., etc.).

Only logical.

Again, the request is not to change 'GB', but only to add 'UK' as the
identifier already in use for e-mail and websites.

In passing, I do not pretend either to understand or agree with what
Harald says (below), but suppose one must take it into account.
mg

Scríobh Harald Tveit Alvestrand:
> ...
> "United Kingdom" is a stupid name for a
> country, but the British seem to be attached to it - allocating the .uk
> domain to the British academics in the early 80s was a mistake by Jon
> Postel, but the inconsistency is not terribly harmful.
> 
> "GB" is the first letter in the third and fourth word of the formal name of
> the country (fourth and fifth if you count "of"). It's the ISO 3166
> agency's choice, and theirs to change if they ever want to.
> 
> I hope they don't. Too much work with no benefit.
> Harald 

--

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 20:12:34 +0100

Note to the lists:

The text Marion quotes was sent in private email.
I did not send it to any mailing lists, and had no wish to bring the topic 
to either the Unicode, the LTRU or the TC46 list.

My apologies if this message serves to prolong such debate on those lists; 
it might be relevant to TC46, but I don't think it's relevant to Unicode or 
LTRU.

                     Harald Alvestrand

---

From: Marion Gunn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 12:47:09 +0000

Sigh - apologies to Harald, then - it is hard to direct such volumes of
traffic suitably (having a relevant ISO 3166 list might help).
mg

Scríobh Harald Tveit Alvestrand:
> Note to the lists...
>                      Harald Alvestrandi

---

From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:22:52 +0100

>traffic suitably (having a relevant ISO 3166 list might help).

if that can be of interest to you, I can set-up http://3166.info and 
run a mailing list on it for you.
I agree it would unload a lot of mailing lists. However in the case 
of this WG I still have difficulties undestanding what an 
administrative boarder can have to do with a language. But if it may 
help, you welcome.
jfc

---

From: "John Clews" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 10:55:48 -0000 (GMT)

Just to put some sense into this discussion from a UK resident: most other
correspondents about GB/UK are not UK residents.

I find myself agreeing with some elements from most contributors, but
would also like to add some additional facts and corrections.

1. The formal name of the country concerned is

 - The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

2. UK is the most common 2-letter abbreviation used in speech and in
writing to describe the country as a whole, with _extremely_ wide use.

3. Nobody uses GB as a 2-letter abbreviation used in speech and in
writing, as the code begs the question "does GB include Northern Ireland
or not?"

In general, GB as a code causes more questions than does the UK as a code.

4. In ISO 3166, GB is the code for
 - The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
This follows official government policy (unreviewed in several decades)

5. In Internet domain naming, ISO 3166, UK is the code for
 - The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
This follows popular usage of UK.

6. In Eurostat NUTS codes, UK is the code for
 - The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
This follows popular usage of UK.

7. We all hapily put up with the problems: GB in ISO 3166 maps 1:1 with UK
in Eurostat NUTS and Internet domain names.

8. UK existed in domain names before Jan Postel allocated them, and I
don't think it is fair to Jan to say that this was a mistake. When the
JANET system managed UK academic domain names prior to that, domain names
were something like
... uk.ac.leeds
and it was very easy to do a major global change to
... leeds.ac.uk
for all universities

Best regards

John Clews

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Marion wrote, re: [Fwd: Re: [Ltru] Re: Åland]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: [Ltru] Re: Åland
From:    "Marion Gunn" <[email-masked]>
Date:    Wed, November 2, 2005 6:30 pm
To:      [email-masked]
         [email-masked]
Cc:      [email-masked]
         "TC46-L Information and Documentation Technology List"
<[email-masked]>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Only look beyond that and see how reality requires 'UK' be included in ISO
3166 to accommodate the actual fact (reality) that the e-mail
territorial address identifier for the entire territory (Great Britain
_and_ Northern Ireland) is actually .UK (as in www.bbc.co.uk,
smo.uhi.ac,uk, www.qub.ac.uk, www.cadw.wales.gov.uk, etc., etc.).

Only logical.

>
> "GB" is the first letter in the third and fourth word of the formal name
of the country (fourth and fifth if you count "of"). It's the ISO 3166
agency's choice, and theirs to change if they ever want to.

-- 

Best regards

John Clews

--
John Clews,
Keytempo Limited (Information Management),
8 Avenue Rd, Harrogate, HG2 7PG
Tel:    01423 888 432
mobile: 07766 711 395
Email:  [email-masked]

---

From: r&d afrac <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 03:09:14 +0100

At 11:55 03/11/2005, John Clews wrote:
>8. UK existed in domain names before Jan Postel allocated them, and 
>I don't think it is fair to Jan to say that this was a mistake. When 
>the JANET system managed UK academic domain names prior to that, 
>domain names were something like ... uk.ac.leeds and it was very 
>easy to do a major global change to ... leeds.ac.uk

John,
may be of interest I detail the history, as it explains the today 
situation, the WG-ltru contention and many other architectural disputes.

Robert Tréhin (Tymnet - 1st network service bill in 2/72) started 
with the BPO the British international packet services in 1977. I was 
still an external consultant (I joined officially Tymnet in May 78 
and created Intlnet in August) interested in M.E. and in private 
value-added systems.

- all the countries started with a Tymnet gateway, either local 
(Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, etc.) or in New-York (Israel, 
South-Africa, etc). For all these independent national systems we 
used ISO 3166 alpha-3 root names (GER-- ,BEL-- , FRA-- , ITA--, etc.).

- France, was in the lead. First to install a full gateway to the 
Transpac network (one million of users around 1982), it closed the 
Cyclades network in 1979. Cyclades was the network of Louis Pouzin 
(we created Eurolinc over the multilingual issue). It permitted Louis 
to stabilise TCP/IP and to introduce the DoD "catenet" architecture 
("the network of networks", cf. RFC 1958) Vint Cerf applied. Louis is 
one of the leaders of the people supporters at the WSIS and authored 
some parts of the 2003 declarations.

- BPO (British Post Office) kept working with Internet people and 
Larry Roberts/Barry Westler Telenet team (the packet concept was 
invented by a British). So, they issue an independent RFP (end 1977) 
for an International Packet Switch System (X.25 which had not yet 
specified separately from X.75). In the meanwhile they _leased_ ports 
to the Tymshare UK, on the Tymnet corporate's network. So their root 
name was Tymshare UK Ltd.'s "UK" root name. Peter Jones was the 
Director there who organised it.

We confirmed this in 1984 when interconnecting the ARPANET Internet. 
We agreed on the dotted format for the international connection of 
the DNS. Our names were rootname/hostname (and application-name since 
1978). We reversed name at the Gateway on the "dot-root" (final dot - 
to avoid confusion with IP addresses). Our obsoleting "UKLEEDSAC" 
being transformed into "ac.leeds.uk" and vice versa (after the whole 
internet became "name.arpa", and then diversified in several TLDs in 1984).

ISO 3166 alpha-2 is the Telex code. We used it to identified the 
"pirate" traffic: the Telex refilers, mostly active between UK 
(by  then operating X.25) and  the USA, refiling Telex traffic under 
low cost packet services. The Internet communities were doing the 
same (refiling TCP/IP traffic under Tymnet or X.75 protocols). So we 
used the same root names (the DNS degraded into "TLD", what initiated 
the debate of the "alt/open roots). Jon Postel's RFC 920 stabilised 
our consensus.

Unfortunately I made the _big_ mistake not to impose the X.121 
numbering plan in the agreement (I was finishing to port all the 
international network under X.121 addresses): we considered Internet 
as a local private network (like Euronet, IBM or GTE) and the DoD had 
committed to X.121 support (they published RFC 1236 ...  7 years 
later on). Otherwise we would be IPv6 for a very long (32 hexa 
addresses have been voted by the ITU-T [CCITT] in 1984/85).

This is because I know first hand the impact of this kind of mistakes 
and their very long hysteresis, I do not want us not to repeat it 
with  limited rigid langtags. The hysteresis of the "UK" issue is 
already 28 years, and still not addressed. The hysteresis of the 
"en-commerce" tag will probably be also more than 2 generations and 
hence affect more than 10 or 20 billions people before they can 
painstakingly restore their own culture.

The confusion over "GB"/"UK" - for all this time, and still for a 
while - is the same as for langtags, and many other architectural 
issues, between:

- those who want to rule "the network"as per the(ir) rule and their 
(commercial) concept (CLDR) (see RFC 3935 definition of the Internet, 
very similar to the US Communications Code definition) - it should be 
"GB" because it is the ISO tables (computer is the master)

- and those who want to support the _people_ (whatever fun they have) 
through a network technology (see the usual IETF definition of the 
Internet as the adherence to the RFCs). It is "UK" because this is 
the way British people think of it (Brainware - people are the masters).

I maintain for a long, and I am disputed the same, the master is the 
man and the computer the slave, not the opposite. ISO may say "GB", 
"UK" it will be because people say so. WG-ltru may say the CLDR's 
ABNF, it will be RFC 4151 because people (and DoD, Govs, SSDOs) will 
use it. Better to have RFC3066 bis (if it is supposed to be a BCP) to 
acknowledge it and to organise CLDR relations, through filtering. Or 
CLDR will meet difficulties.

jfc