More facts about the TW issue (was: Re: Must debian-installer use iso-codes package when choosing country?)
Quoting Denis Barbier (barbier@linuxfr.org):
> Please have a look at KDE (run kcontrol, select 'Regional & accessibility',
> then 'Country/Region & Language'), they use real short names: Macedonia
> and Taiwan in these particular cases.
> Their list looks much smarter than the UN one.
Well, "smarter" is a matter of perception, probably.
The basic problem should be : "why KDE did choose these names instead
of the only internationnally recognised (bad) ones".
I *also* feel that "Taiwan" and "Macedonia" look more "natural". But I
also feel I have any right at all for changing this if the only
internationnalyrecognised standard use them
Indeed, I found yesterday that the iso-3166 list and FAQ gives
incorrect reasons for giving TW this controversial name.
They mention that the name comes from the UN list of "country, regions
and other areas for statistical use". They even point to the UN web
site for this list....where neither "Taiwan" nor "Taiwan, province of
China" are listed!
It indeed looks like ISO-3166 is a bit late after UN. The UN list
probably included "TW=Taiwan, province of China" in the past. However,
they currently DO NOT HAVE TW at all (probably a side effect of Taiwan
not being anymore a member of UN since 1971).
This point needs more investigation : if the reference ISO-3166
maintenance agency used is wrong, then the standard should change. I
will try to find more information about a possible future change
(which we could then anticipate).
Reply to: