Address of ISO 3166 mailing list

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Tue Jun 3 18:16:32 CEST 2003


At 15:36 +0100 2003-06-03, Marion Gunn wrote:

>Context: Ireland advisability of reserving 'EI' tag for cited usage 
>(baggage-handling at international airports)  and the fact I am only 
>discovering now that some things such as this, which I had taken for 
>granted as being registered/reserved for/by NSAI have yet to be so 
>registered/reserved.

I am sure that the ISO 3166 maintenance agency will reply indicating 
that it would be inadvisable to do so. Ireland has a 3166 two-letter 
code, IE, which is entirely satisfactory for the purposes assigned to 
it, such as in internet domain names. I expect that the reason UK was 
"reserved" was because the internet domain names were already using 
it instead of GB, and by reserving it one potential confusion might 
be avoided.

There is no reason to "take for granted" that NSAI would have taken a 
view that these codes should have been reserved. It isn't a good 
idea, and there aren't any grounds for making the request.

I have already noted that "baggage-handling at international 
airports" does not constitute an implementation of EI any more than 
it does of IE, except in the accident that the two-letter airline 
code EI refers to Aer Lingus. It takes some expertise to know the 
difference between a country code, a language code, and an airline 
code, but it doesn't take very much.
-- 
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com


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