[tz] Propose to improve where to find rules for "Indian/Kerguelen"

[Mark Davis ☕]

I firmly agree. Stability is far more important than fiddling with the
identifier names.

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
http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/diff/supplemental/territory_containment_un_m_49.html
)

And for programmers, grep or equivalent is fine.

------------------------------
Mark <https://plus.google.com/114199149796022210033>
*
*
*— Il meglio è l’inimico del bene —*
**



On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 5:26 AM, Kevin Kenny <kkenny2 at nycap.rr.com> wrote:

> On 05/15/2012 07:56 AM, Kevin Lyda wrote:
>
>> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 12:36 PM, David Patte<dpatte at relativedata.com>
>>  wrote:
>>
>>> No, America is not a continent. It is two continents. North America, and
>>>
>>
>> This is debatable.
>>
>> http://blog.cgpgrey.com/what-**are-continents/<http://blog.cgpgrey.com/what-are-continents/>
>>
>> In the end it's all subjective.  And since it's subjective and it's
>> annoying to make these changes, it's a valid position to say that the
>> current configuration is subjectively fine.
>>
>
> And it's also politically charged.  There are several countries
> that are located in a part of the globe traditionally identified as
> Asia that have petitioned at various times to join the EU; I recall
> at least one proposal to change such a country to a 'Europe/' identifier
> from an 'Asia/' one.
>
> And the 'North_America/South_America' line is equally thorny. Central
> American countries face vehement arguments over whether they belong
> to North America (by geographical affiliation - placing the dividing
> line at the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Panama) or to South America
> (by language and culture).
>
> There are no good answers. Stability argues that the best answer is
> to say, "the names are what they have been, right or wrong, until and
> unless an overwhelming consensus emerges to change them."
> It means that we wind up stuck with some past mistakes. It also means
> that we don't have to track the political winds that whirl about
> continually and return according to their circuits.
>
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