Doug Ewell said: > ISO 3166/MA makes a big fuss on its newly revamped web site about the > widespread use (and usability) of 3166. Users who read this text will > expect the standard, especially the alpha-2 codes, to be stable.
He may have missed the link prominently labelled: "ISO 3166 has evolved continuously". ;-) http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/04background-on-iso-3166/iso3166-past-present-and-future.html (sorry about the long URL folks -- you thought Unicode URL's were bad!) which proudly states, among other things: "... During the 26 years passed by since 1976 only 26 country names have been deleted completely from ISO 3166. A far bigger number of changes to country names and/or their code elements have been announced by the ISO3166/MA in ISO 3166 Newsletters. Generally speaking, the list of code elements in ISO 3166 is very stable and changes are made only when necessary. The country names tend to change more often but not every such change calls for a new code element." Uh..., well, yes. I can see that I can depend implicitly on the stability of this standard. Actually, what I think is going on here is a cultural mismatch in perceived requirements. ISO and the ISO3166/MA have been and are proud that 3166 keeps evolving to track the continuously changing political status (and names, and name preferences) of countries around the world, so that it is always current and up-to-date. That serves people who want a current reference. And to their credit, ISO added, not too long ago, ISO 3166-3 "Code for formerly used names of countries" to deal with the changed names, former countries, merged countries, and split countries issues. But that approach is antithetical to the once-encoded, unchanged- forever requirement that is needed for legacy backwards compatibility in software systems. So part of the problem here is a misperception by the software community of the nature of an ISO *terminological* standard, and recurring attempts to apply something to software assuming it is unchangeable, without first having determined that to be the case. --Ken "Before one starts throwing stones at the windows, it helps to check first whether you are inside or outside of the house."
