Area codes [was Re: Updated! LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM :

[John Cowan]

John Clews scripsit:

> It strikes me that people looking at this list should request some
> sort of standard code for "Areas" covering more than one country.

This code already exists and is in use by the U.N., which coordinates
it with the numeric codes they assign for ISO 3166.  As we have recently
learned, 3166 letter codes are not stable, whereas the numeric codes are.
Here's the list of Area, as you call them, or "macro geographical regions"
as the U.N. has it:

002 Africa
014 Eastern Africa
017 Middle Africa
015 Northern Africa
018 Southern Africa
011 Western Africa
019 Americas
419 Latin America and the Caribbean
029 Caribbean
013 Central America
005 South America
021 Northern America
142 Asia
030 Eastern Asia
062 South-central Asia
035 South-eastern Asia
145 Western Asia
150 Europe
151 Eastern Europe
154 Northern Europe
039 Southern Europe
155 Western Europe
009 Oceania
053 Australia and New Zealand
054 Melanesia
057 Micronesia
061 Polynesia

A precise definition of these codes in terms of the countries they
comprise, and their hierarchical relations, can be found at
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm .

Now admittedly a U.N. standard is not equivalent to an International
Standard, but it is certainly international.

-- 
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
Promises become binding when there is a meeting of the minds and consideration
is exchanged. So it was at King's Bench in common law England; so it was
under the common law in the American colonies; so it was through more than
two centuries of jurisprudence in this country; and so it is today. 
       --_Specht v. Netscape_