[OT] Flag coding (was: Re: Tags and future new technologies [...])

Philippe Verdy wrote:

> If the first need is to represent current country flags simply
> (ignoring the dated versions), and the first level of subdivisions in
> those countries, then ISO 3166 already provides the basic codes (we
> just need the convention that any codes that consists in two letters,
> or start by two letters, and hyphen must obey to ISO 3166-1 or ISO
> 3166-2. Further extensions will wait the development of a more
> complete registry, which will allow defining codes using other
> prefixes acting like namespaces.

For flags belonging to nations and subnational entities, of course one
would expect a flags code to use widely recognized standards, starting
with ISO 3166. For my four examples, it might have:

1. the United States → US
2. the state of Colorado → US-CO
3. Adams County, Colorado → US-CO-001 (using FIPS 6-4; although that
standard has been withdrawn, I can’t find what replaced it; other
standards would be needed for second-level subdivisions of other
countries)
4. the city of Thornton → US-THT (using UN/LOCODE)

There are other possibilities. But this only tells part of the story;
one would probably want the flags code to cover current or historical
entities without standard code elements, such as the Holy Roman Empire
or NATO, or other types of domains, such as maritime and military and
auto racing and the Olympic Games and classical pirates (and maybe
modern ones too). There would have to be a coding mechanism for this—not
necessarily all the code elements, not right away, but a way to expand
to include them.

I think this is getting off-topic for Unicode, though I know Philippe
thinks of it as the basis for a great addition to Unicode.

--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA
http://www.ewellic.org | @DougEwell ­