Avoiding Problems by Avoiding Decisions

[Antonio Larrosa]

On Thursday 13 May 2004 18:06, George Staikos wrote:

I thought of a proposal yesterday that might be good enough for everyone (at 
least I hope it is).

The way I see it, the ISO 3166 list doesn't only contain country names, but 
contain two versions of them, the short name (until the ',') and the full 
long name (which is a longer description of the country). We could use only 
the short name in order to provide a better non-cluttered user interface, and 
only use the "long name" when it's necessary in order to distinguish two 
countries with the same "short name".

> On May 13, 2004 11:02, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> > On Thu May 13 2004 16:50, George Staikos wrote:
> > > http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists
> > >/l is t-en1.html
> >
> > TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA 	TW
> > PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED 	PS

In this cases, the short names are "Taiwan" and "Palestinian Territory", which 
I suppose is right for the people living on those countries, and our decision 
would be backed up by the ISO list, which is what George is trying to do the 
way I see it (find a way to back up our decisions in a "neutral" way).

Also, Macedonia would still be Macedonia, since the list says:

MACEDONIA, THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF

whose long name is too long for an enjoyable user experience with our 
desktop :)

The only "problem" would be repeated names like 
VIRGIN ISLANDS, BRITISH 
VIRGIN ISLANDS, U.S.
but as I said, our policy could be to use the long (complete) name in those 
cases, since it would be silly to use the short names there.

Would everyone agree to choose that policy when naming countries?

Greetings,

--
Antonio Larrosa
larrosa at kde.org