language subtag registration request: Region EU

Doug Ewell dewell at adelphia.net
Sat Jan 14 19:51:58 CET 2006


Regarding the wilingness of ISO 3166/MA to assign code elements for 
Antarctica and other non-countries, I'm sure they would consider a 
request to assign EU formally if (a) UNSD gave it a numeric code element 
and (b) the MA received a request from a member body, preferably one 
located within the EU.  Those appear to be its criteria.  If the MA did 
this, then the Reviewer would file a registration form with IANA and EU 
would be automatically added as a region subtag.

The MA defines the following categories on its "decoding table" page:

* Officially assigned code element
* User-assigned code element
* Exceptionally reserved code element
* Transitionally reserved code element
* Indeterminately reserved code element
* Code elements not used at present stage
* Un-assigned code elements

While there is some ambiguity in having five categories between 
"officially assigned" and "un-assigned," I believe the word "assigned" 
as used in Section 3.4 of RFC 3066bis specifically refers to the 
"officially assigned" state within ISO 3166.  (ISO 639 and 15924 and UN 
M.49 do not have these semi-official "reserved" states.)  That was the 
intention of the WG during lengthy discussion of this topic -- search 
the archives for Guernsey and Jersey -- and that is the way the RFC is 
worded.

As for adding EU ourselves, in the absence of an assigned ISO 3166 code 
element, Section 3.5 is quite clear that we cannot do this.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California, USA
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/




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