[Pkg-isocodes-devel] Please add Alexis Darasse to the iso-codes project

[Alexis Darrasse]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 07:37:24AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> Alexis, welcome on board. If you feel like helping to improve
> iso-codes, please jump in and dig into things we still need to work
> on.

Thank you for your warm welcome :) I started a review of the iso_3166_2.xml
file and I would like I confirmation on my understanding on the
conventions we are following, before changing entries that don't seem to
respect them.

So, it seems to me that if a country is included in one of the ISO
3166-2 newsletters we:

1. use the exact same names, even if they contain a redundant string
(like "Region") in all of them. (in my last count this was respected 6
times and not respected twice)

2. when ISO gives variants of the names, use only the first one if they
are in different columns but use both if the second one is in square
brackets or parentheses. Generaly when there are multiple columns it
corresponds to different transliteration schemes or official languages,
while the others seem more as unofficial variants to me, but that's just
my interpretation.

3. when ISO gives higher-level subdivisions without assigning them
global codes (e.g. autonomous communities in Spain), we put them as-is.
I have however the impression that the geographical_region element
should be used instead, as it is the case for Italy. We also don't use
the information on the relationships between regions and subdivisions
that is present in the ISO, maybe we should add an optional attribute in
iso_3166_2_entry?