ISO 639 and RFC 3066bis

[John Cowan]

Addison Phillips [wM] scripsit:

> The problem here is the slippery slope. Do we obsolete data that uses
> these defunct names or regions, just because it isn't likely that we'll
> create more data. I'm in favor of deprecating the old codes, but banning
> them seems suspicous. If CS was a bad decision, why is SU, YU, BU, TP,
> etc. a good enough one to allow in? The obvious problem here is that,
> given an alpha2 namespace for ISO 3166 to work with and a reasonably
> desire for mnemonicity (is that a word??), it won't be that long before
> we have a healthy list of UN M49 numbers resulting from reassignments.

There's a difference between obsoleting codes and reusing them, though
with a fixed space obsoleting codes eventually implies reusing them.
I'd say don't allow any codes that were obsolete before some magic date.

> I assume that reserved codes that aren't assigned are codes that are
> not assigned (and thus banned).

I don't understand this sentence.

-- 
A mosquito cried out in his pain,               John Cowan
"A chemist has poisoned my brain!"              http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
        The cause of his sorrow                 http://www.reutershealth.com
        Was para-dichloro-                      cowan at ccil.org
Diphenyltrichloroethane.                                (aka DDT)