[tz] Proposal to change Macquarie Island to be Australian territory

[Tobias Conradi]

On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 11:17 AM, Mark Davis ☕ <mark at macchiato.com> wrote:
>> Variable length and inconsistent country code usage:
>
> This is a misunderstanding.
Of the UN LOCODE system, on the side of CLDR designers.

> CLDR is specified to use 5 letter UN LOCODEs where they exist. Where they do
> not exist, it is specified to use a non-5-letter code, precisely so that
> they do not overlap with future UN LOCODEs.
That could have been easily achieved with 5-letter codes, as has been shown at:
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2012-May/017974.html and
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2012-May/017980.html

If overlap prevention the goal, then there was misunderstanding of the
UN LOCODE system on the side of CLDR.

> When the codes are not 5
> letters, the first two letters have no meaning.
Except where they have. And for some from the US, even the first 4
have a meaning:
debsngn: de = Germany
gldkshvn: gl = Greenland
mxstis: mx = Mexico
rukhndg: ru = Russia
ruunera: ru = Russia
usinvev: us = US (usin = Indiana)
usnavajo: us = US
usndcnt: us = US (usnd = North Dakota)
usndnsl: us = US (usnd = North Dakota)

> The codes are stablized, meaning that they will not change no matter what
> changes happen in the base codes. So if Hawaii leaves the US and joins
> Canada as a new province, "ushnl" would not change in CLDR even if the UN
> LOCODE changes to "cahnl" or something else.
And combining this with "When the codes are not 5 letters, the first
two letters have no meaning.", assuming that, if they have 5 letters
they /may/ have a meaning, leads to the fact that the meaning in CLDR
would be different from the meaning in the UN LOCODE system.

A statement on why a country relation was not seen suitable for time
zone identifiers can be found at:
ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/code/Theory
"Be robust in the presence of political changes."

-- 
Tobias Conradi
Rheinsberger Str. 18
10115 Berlin
Germany

http://tobiasconradi.com