[tz] Proposal to define a Private Use Area within the zone naming scheme

[Tobias Conradi]

CURRENT:
No private use area defined.

PROPOSAL:
Define a private use area.

Use AA or Aa to have the name start with the same letter as most other
Areas that represent continents do (America, Africa, Asia, Australia)

Since AA is an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 private code, it can be used by
CLDR, that uses UN/LOCODEs, too, to define a private range.

The private range would be defined on the top level, so it is not
affected by any change to the Area names (America, Africa, Asia,
Australia, etc.)

Organizations are then free to have their own subareas inside, e.g. i

Aa/NorwayGov/Bouvet/
Aa/RussiaGov/Barnaul/
Aa/GemBuesingen/Buesingen/
Aa/Pre1970project/
Aa/JohnDoe/
Aa/Legal/ (legal time instead of majority observed time)

REASONING:
Allow people to create zones having names that will not be the same as
IANA time zone names.

This is helpful when the IANA time zone database maintainers do not
fix bugs (e.g. West Siberia) and do not create zones for regions
solely because they have no permanent population, despite the time
there being defined by law of the sovereign state to which it belongs
(Bouvet Island).

== Systems having a private use area ==
=== Country codes ===
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2
AA, QM ... QZ, XA ...XZ, ZZ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#User-assigned_code_elements

ISO 3166-1 alpha-3
AAA ... AAZ, QMA ... QZZ, XAA ... XZZ, ZZA ... ZZZ.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-3#User-assigned_code_elements

ISO 3166-1 numeric
900 ... 999
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_numeric#User-assigned_code_elements

=== Script codes ===
ISO 15924
Qaaa ... Qabx (900 ... 949): 50 Codes reserved for private use.

=== Language codes ===
ISO 639-3
Private Use Area (range qaa to qtz)

-- 
Tobias Conradi
Rheinsberger Str. 18
10115 Berlin
Germany

http://tobiasconradi.com/