Long "short names" (was: Re: Request to register private-use variant subtags)
Doug Ewell
doug at ewellic.org
Sun Apr 8 00:30:50 CEST 2012
Gordon P. Hemsley wrote:
> There are other problems with accepting the Registry verbatim, as
> well. For example, the value the Description field is often much more
> verbose than it needs to be. In particular, it would be undesirable to
> accept name a like "Islamic Republic of Iran" when "Iran" would do
> just fine. Space is at a premium in a user interface.
By the way, I also don't like ISO 3166 "short names" such as these,
which seem to be more about national pride than clarity. How many people
do you know who would speak of "United Republic of Tanzania" or "Lao
People's Democratic Republic"?
Lately we have begun to establish a precedent that changes to short
names in ISO 3166 such as "Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of," which add
nothing to clarity but make some NB happy, need not be copied slavishly
into the LSR. Unfortunately, efforts to simplify or clarify some of the
existing names ran into obstacles, as it is hard to draw the line
between big improvements and minuscule ones not worth the effort.
--
Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA
http://www.ewellic.org | @DougEwell
More information about the Ietf-languages
mailing list