And just another follow-up, to try to explain *why* the mechanism for Regional Indicator Codes might be so closely tied to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code elements:
ISO 3166-1 codes are derived from code elements published by the United Nations Statistics Division. This is the group that ultimately decides "what is and isn't a country" for the purposes of these codes. While there is inevitably some political influence in the UN, many organizations and projects that use ISO 3166-1 codes do so to avoid getting embroiled in their own debate over "what is a country." The IETF language-tagging project (BCP 47, RFC 5646; see "IETF language tag" in Wikipedia for more information) is one example. Conversely, it is sometimes the case that groups which seek to extend the set of ISO 3166-1 codes unilaterally, or to establish a competing or supplemental coding system, might do so in order to gain acceptance or establish credibility for a nation or territory that is not recognized as such by UNSD. It is entirely reasonable (IMHO) to suggest that if Unicode were to attempt, by whatever means, to enable encoding of flags for entities beyond those encoded in ISO 3166-1, that the door would be opened wide for unrecognized nations and separatist groups to claim that the Unicode Consortium "supports" their cause by supporting display of their flag. It's very possible that Unicode has thought of this and does not want to put itself in that position. -- Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, USA | http://ewellic.org _______________________________________________ Unicode mailing list Unicode@unicode.org http://unicode.org/mailman/listinfo/unicode
