[Pkg-isocodes-devel] ISO 3166-3

[Alexis Darrasse]

I noticed that iso_3166.xml is not valid xml because of four
iso_3166_3_entry that have an alpha_2_code attribute. This made me try
to understand how 3166-3 works and so I propose the following: remove
these four alpha_2_code attributes and all the iso_3166_3_entry that do
have a two-letter alpha_4_code because

1. the alpha_2_code is just the first two letters of the alpha_4_code
2. a two-letter alpha_4_code is for a country whose entry was modified
but kept the same Alpha-2 code. It seems to me that these cases are not
included in 3166-3, see for example Romania that changed its Alpha-3
code in 2002.

Alternative solutions would be to add an alpha_2_code attribute to each
iso_3166_3_entry and/or state that iso_3166_3_entry is used for a
superset of ISO 3166-3, namely all modifications of 3166-1 (which is
what 3166-3 was supposed to do but doesn't).

What do you think?