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

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Tue Aug 23 2005 - 00:00:38 CDT

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

    From: "Doug Ewell" <dewell@adelphia.net>
    >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.

    I cannot resist to reply your (quite irrespective) remark!

    Sorry, this was an evident minor (1-char) typo here. Of course I meant ISO
    3166-1 alpha-3. I know that ISO 3166-2 refers to subdivisions of countries
    (as I also said in the rest of the message, where I wanted to criticize the
    way it is currently built).

    And alpha-3 codes have their use also in France and US (where did you read
    that they don't use them?) in many applications (less than alpha-2 codes,
    but the "do not use" expression is wrong).

    What I wanted to show is that, for countries and territories in ISO 3166-1,
    alpha-3 codes and numeric codes are more reliable than alpha-2 commonly used
    to build locale identifiers.



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Aug 23 2005 - 00:02:53 CDT