[tz] Stable fixed length identifiers for IANA time zones

[Tobias Conradi]

Steven, Mark,

I checked the latest timezone.xml contained in core.zip linked from
http://cldr.unicode.org/index/bcp47-extension

Are the values for the names that are not /[a-z]{5}/ , e.g.

<type name="mxstis" ... >

already permanently fixed? What happens if Santa Isabel gets an
UN/LOCODE in the future?

I am using UN/LOCODEs since at least 2003

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=UN/LOCODE&diff=prev&oldid=1414613

In my system the first two letters never map into a set of ISO 3166-1
countries (current and former) without one set member being or having
been the country for the location, e.g. "jeruslm", the first letters,
JE, stand for Jersey, which never was a country where Jerusalem was
located.

If there is "usnavajo" placing "navajo" below "us", then
<type name="jeruslm" alias="Asia/Jerusalem Asia/Tel_Aviv Israel"
description="Jerusalem"/>
is inconsistent, since Asia/Jerusalem is used for Israel, which would
lead to "iljerusalem" or so and instead of "hebron" and "gaza" it
would be "pshebron" and "psgaza"

Since UN/LOCODE doesn't use the numbers 0 and 1, I created private
codes using "1" in third position, so for Santa Isabel I would use

MX1SI or in lower case mx1si

for Hebron PS1HB, Gaza PS1GZ

That way the codes all can be of the same length, namely 5 characters.

Tobias

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Steven R. Loomis <srl at icu-project.org> wrote:
> On 05/24/2012 04:27 PM, Tobias Conradi wrote:
...
> E.g. CLDR has created UN/LOCODE based codes:
> http://cldr.unicode.org/development/development-process/design-proposals/bcp47-mapping
>
>
> This a draft design document proposing what is now the 'tz' field of IETF
> BCP 47 Extension U  < https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6067> referencing UTS35
> and data <
> http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/#Unicode_Language_and_Locale_Identifiers>.
> However, it is not relevant to simply the discussion of "." and "-",
> instead, the UN/LOCODE based codes (with some additions) were needed due to
> length restrictions.




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Tobias Conradi
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