<font face="times new roman,serif">I firmly agree. Stability is far more important than fiddling with the identifier names.</font><div><font face="times new roman,serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="times new roman,serif">After all, the identifier names are really not for human consumption; they need translation for anything but English, and even for English need some tweaking. And if people want to have different groupings, that is easy to do. In CLDR, for example, we group according to the United Nations M.49 standard for continents and subcontinents. (Cf </font><font face="'times new roman', serif"><a href="http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/diff/supplemental/territory_containment_un_m_49.html">http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/diff/supplemental/territory_containment_un_m_49.html</a>)</font><div>
<font face="times new roman,serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="times new roman,serif">And for programmers, grep or equivalent is fine.<br clear="all"></font><font face="'times new roman', serif"><div style="background-color:transparent;margin-top:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-right:0px">
<div><span><br><hr></span></div></div><div style="background-color:transparent;margin-top:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-right:0px"><a href="https://plus.google.com/114199149796022210033" target="_blank">Mark</a></div>
<div style="background-color:transparent;margin-top:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-right:0px"><i><br></i></div><div style="background-color:transparent;margin-top:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-right:0px">
<i>— Il meglio è l’inimico del bene —</i></div></font><div><div><font face="'times new roman', serif"><i><span style="font-style:normal"><i></i></span><i></i></i></font></div></div><br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 5:26 AM, Kevin Kenny <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kkenny2@nycap.rr.com" target="_blank">kkenny2@nycap.rr.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">On 05/15/2012 07:56 AM, Kevin Lyda wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 12:36 PM, David Patte<<a href="mailto:dpatte@relativedata.com" target="_blank">dpatte@relativedata.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
No, America is not a continent. It is two continents. North America, and<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
This is debatable.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://blog.cgpgrey.com/what-are-continents/" target="_blank">http://blog.cgpgrey.com/what-<u></u>are-continents/</a><br>
<br>
In the end it's all subjective. And since it's subjective and it's<br>
annoying to make these changes, it's a valid position to say that the<br>
current configuration is subjectively fine.<br>
</blockquote>
<br></div>
And it's also politically charged. There are several countries<br>
that are located in a part of the globe traditionally identified as<br>
Asia that have petitioned at various times to join the EU; I recall<br>
at least one proposal to change such a country to a 'Europe/' identifier<br>
from an 'Asia/' one.<br>
<br>
And the 'North_America/South_America' line is equally thorny. Central<br>
American countries face vehement arguments over whether they belong<br>
to North America (by geographical affiliation - placing the dividing<br>
line at the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama) or to South America<br>
(by language and culture).<br>
<br>
There are no good answers. Stability argues that the best answer is<br>
to say, "the names are what they have been, right or wrong, until and<br>
unless an overwhelming consensus emerges to change them."<br>
It means that we wind up stuck with some past mistakes. It also means<br>
that we don't have to track the political winds that whirl about<br>
continually and return according to their circuits.<br>
</blockquote></div><br></div></div>