Missing subtags 003 and 172

[John Cowan]

Doug Ewell scripsit:

> 003 (North America) is defined in a footnote as comprising 013 (Central  
> America) plus 021 (Northern America) plus 029 (Caribbean).  RFC 4645  
> said that the code elements assigned to "macro-geographical  
> (continental)" regions in M.49 were added, which is why 003 was not  
> added; it did not appear in that category, but in a footnote, probably  
> because it does not fit cleanly into the overall M.49 hierarchy.

In practice, where you think you should use 003, you should probably
use 021 instead.

> 172 (Commonwealth of Independent States) is an economic grouping,   

Indeed: in UNSD usage it means "the former ruble zone", without regard
to the actual membership of the actual CIS, which is quite unstable:
the Baltics never joined, Ukraine is a de facto but not de jure
member, and Georgia has withdrawn.

> As it turned out, since the publication of RFC 4645 the LTRU WG decided  
> to include EU (European Union) as a region subtag, despite any evidence  
> of its usefulness for identifying language usage, 

"the lack of any evidence", I suppose.

> As has been the case since the publication of RFC 4646, we can register  
> subtags based on the external standards only if something has changed  
> about their status in the external standard.  We cannot simply decide we  
> want to change the rules and allow previously excluded values.  So if  
> Mark wants to permit the use of 003 and 172 in BCP 47 language tags,  
> this amendment needs to appear in an RFC.

+1

-- 
May the hair on your toes never fall out!       John Cowan
        --Thorin Oakenshield (to Bilbo)         cowan at ccil.org