Re: Questions re ISO-639-1,2,3

From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Mon Aug 22 2005 - 22:40:25 CDT

  • Next message: Philippe Verdy: "Re: Questions re ISO-639-1,2,3"

    I have much more to say on this topic later, but this one can't wait.

    Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote:

    > This is not the case of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes commonly used
    > when designing locale codes. On the opposite, the UNSD numeric code,
    > and the ISO 3166-2 alpha-3 codes are much more stable.

    You cannot be serious:

    * ISO 3166-2 code elements are not necessarily alpha-3. Among many
    other countries, France and the U.S. do not use alpha-3 code elements.

    * ISO 3166-1 and 3166-2 do not even serve the same purpose. The former
    is for countries, the latter is for subdivisions within countries.

    * ISO 3166-2 code elements are MUCH less stable than 3166-1. It is not
    unheard of for the 60-odd code elements assigned to one country to be
    thrown out and replaced by a completely different set of 80-odd code
    elements.

    I wonder what two standards you were really thinking of.

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


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Aug 22 2005 - 22:42:21 CDT