Splitting country codes (was: Re: LANGUAGE SUBTAG MODIFICATION - GB)
Doug Ewell
dewell at adelphia.net
Sat Apr 1 08:56:01 CEST 2006
Erik van der Poel <erikv at google dot com> wrote:
> Do people view this operation as a kind of "splitting" of GB into GB,
> GG, IM and JE? Or do people generally think of this as the addition of
> GG, IM and JE? If many think of this as a split, and an organization
> or individual wanted to follow these splits over time, would they have
> to go to ISO (or subscribe to their newsletter)? It would be nice if
> people didn't have to go to ISO, since that is the very organization
> that we have said is too unstable for our purposes.
ISO 3166/MA does have a concept of "merging" code elements. When a code
element is withdrawn, it is added to ISO 3166-3, and if its territory
(or nationhood or something) is absorbed by another country, the code
element of the absorbing country is made part of the ISO 3166-3 code
element. A classic case was the withdrawal of DD; since this was
effectively a merger of DD into DE, the ISO 3166-3 code element is DDDE.
This implies a statement on the MA's part about the relationship between
DD and DE.
An ISO 3166-3 code element is also created to reflect name changes (e.g.
Timor-Leste) or "splits" where the original country's code element is
withdrawn (e.g. the Soviet Union split into 15 countries, none of which
inherited SU).
When a code element is added, and none is deleted, there is no
comparable mechanism to express whether a "split" has occurred, although
it seems reasonable to assume that such a situation implies a split
(since virtually every inhabited area on Earth falls under an ISO 3166-1
code element). But the MA does not normally indicate that this is a
split, or what country is losing part of its territory. For example, in
Newsletter V-9 (February 2004) when Åland Islands split from Finland and
AX was assigned, there was no mention of Finland.
This is the situation that apparently exists with GG and IM and JE being
"split" from GB. We may know that this is a split, but the MA does not
express this anywhere within ISO 3166.
Erik has a point that it would be good to have a place to find
information about these splits. The question is whether the Language
Subtag Registry should serve that purpose.
In private communication, Debbie assured me that her goal is not to make
the registry into an all-purpose compendium of country information,
which was my greatest fear, but to assist users of language tags by
showing a relationship between old and new tagging requirements. For
example, in the past, Guernsey usage would have been indicated with
region subtag GB; starting now it is GG. Adding a comment might allow
users, or implementers of custom matching algorithms, to correlate these
two subtags in some meaningful way.
I still think we need to be careful about adding any sort of information
that gives the appearance of turning the registry into a general
reference work, or is not strictly necessary to implement language
tagging. Debbie has raised a legitimate use case that is directly
related to language tagging. This has been a good debate so far, with
sensible arguments on both sides, and I'm confident we'll make a good
decision in the end.
--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California, USA
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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