Avoiding Problems by Avoiding Decisions

[Allan Sandfeld Jensen]

On Friday 14 May 2004 13:18, Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> On Fri, 14 May 2004, Allan Sandfeld Jensen wrote:
> > > 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?
> >
> > Almost. In case of duplicate names there should be a little "creative"
> > flexibility. For instance the two Koreas would make most sense to rename
> > to North and South Korea, even if those versions are not on the list.
>
> Every time you use a "creative" naming you're making a judgement call and
> making the policy more complicated. So far we have Antonio's original
> proposal with two amendments, as follows:
>
> == proposed policy text
> We use only the short name (from the ISO-3166 code list) 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". The following exceptions are made:
>
> * The short name of locale KP is "North Korea"
> * The short name of locale KR is "South Korea"
> * The short name of locales VG and VI is their long name
>
> The short name locales other than KP, KR, VG and VI can be derived from
> an entry of the list with the following shell command:
>
> # Assume LONG_LOCALE is set to the complete name as shown in the first
> # column of the webpage displaying the ISO-3166 code list:
> echo "$LONG_LOCALE" | sed 's+([^)]*)++' | sed 's+,.*++'
>
> This strips bracketed strings (relevant to locales FK, CC, VA as of this
> writing) and removes the long name extension after the comma.
>
> == end proposed policy text
A few hopefully noncontrovisial additions:
A clarification of duplicate Congos, a common way to find the short form of 
arabic naming tradition (LY and SY), plus a short form for Laos.

* The short name of CD is the full name (or Zaire?)
* The short name of LA is Laos 
* The short name of LY is Libya
* The short name of SY is Syria

But still doesnt solve whether we should allow other regions in the selector, 
and how these should be chosen.

`Allan