FW: Suggestions about separation and ISO code
I'm forwarding this message from Jonas Melian who, after sending it, has subscribed to the time zone mailing list. --ado -----Original Message----- From: Jonas Melian [mailto:jonas.esp@googlemail.com] Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 6:21 AM To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Suggestions about separation and ISO code Some suggestions: 1) To using ISO 3166 3-character country code becasuse is more readable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1 For any person it's easier to identify a country by the code of 3-letters that by the one of 2-letters. 2) Columns separated by another character different of a tab, as ':'. So it's more readable for humans and too for the machines. And so it's easier to maintain that table. I comment you these suggestions because I have something of experience with this type of tables as you can see here: http://webda.python-hosting.com/browser/trunk/data Greetings!
From: Jonas Melian [mailto:jonas.esp@googlemail.com] Some suggestions:
Just to state the obvious, any change in the data format means changing the parsers - and there are many parsers other than the one in tzcode. Also, the data format is not designed for maximum readability. End-users are not supposed to deal with any of this data directly.
1) To using ISO 3166 3-character country code becasuse is more readable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1
For any person it's easier to identify a country by the code of 3-letters that by the one of 2-letters.
For most computer people, the 2-letter codes are by far the most commonly used ones. End-users should see a map, or a menu with place names in their language.
2) Columns separated by another character different of a tab, as ':'. So it's more readable for humans and too for the machines. And so it's easier to maintain that table.
As far as I know, it's actually whitespace (one or more space or tab) separating columns, visually assuming a fixed-width font. I find columns quite readable, and whitespace separation is easy for a parser, too. Best regards, markus -- Opinions expressed here may not reflect my company's positions unless otherwise noted.
From: Jonas Melian Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 6:21 AM To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Suggestions about separation and ISO code
1) To using ISO 3166 3-character country code becasuse is more readable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1
For any person it's easier to identify a country by the code of 3-letters that by the one of 2-letters.
Internet top level domain names for countries are 2-letter codes, derived from the ISO list. More people know something about the internet country codes than about 3-letter ISO codes. More or less related are the US Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 10-4 codes, also 2-letter codes.
There is no shortage of codes for countries. In my programming, I usually use the 3-letter codes of the International Olympic Committee, since what I write is generally sports-related. But for this purpose, being able to match codes with the CLDR is the most important criterion (other than backward compatibility), and that argues for ISO 2-letter. J Andrew Lipscomb, CPA*ABV, ASA Decosimo Corporate Finance 900 Tallan Building 2 Union Square Chattanooga, TN 37402 423.756.7100 Fax 423.266.6671 www.dcf.decosimo.com -----Original Message----- From: Oscar van Vlijmen [mailto:ovv@hetnet.nl] Sent: Mon 27 November 2006 14:21 To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Suggestions about separation and ISO code
From: Jonas Melian Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 6:21 AM To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Suggestions about separation and ISO code
1) To using ISO 3166 3-character country code becasuse is more readable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1
For any person it's easier to identify a country by the code of 3-letters that by the one of 2-letters.
Internet top level domain names for countries are 2-letter codes, derived from the ISO list. More people know something about the internet country codes than about 3-letter ISO codes. More or less related are the US Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 10-4 codes, also 2-letter codes.
What is ISO 3166? ... It contains a two-letter code which is recommended as the general purpose code, _a three-letter code which has better mnenomic properties_ and a numeric-3 code which can be useful if script independence of the codes is important. http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/04background-on-iso-3166/... You can see the three-letter code of some countries here: http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/03updates-on-iso-3166/ind... 2006/11/27, Andy Lipscomb <AndyLipscomb@decosimo.com>:
There is no shortage of codes for countries. In my programming, I usually use the 3-letter codes of the International Olympic Committee, since what I write is generally sports-related. But for this purpose, being able to match codes with the CLDR is the most important criterion (other than backward compatibility), and that argues for ISO 2-letter.
J Andrew Lipscomb, CPA*ABV, ASA
Decosimo Corporate Finance
900 Tallan Building 2 Union Square Chattanooga, TN 37402 423.756.7100 Fax 423.266.6671 www.dcf.decosimo.com
-----Original Message----- From: Oscar van Vlijmen [mailto:ovv@hetnet.nl] Sent: Mon 27 November 2006 14:21 To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Re: Suggestions about separation and ISO code
From: Jonas Melian Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 6:21 AM To: tz@lecserver.nci.nih.gov Subject: Suggestions about separation and ISO code
1) To using ISO 3166 3-character country code becasuse is more readable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1
For any person it's easier to identify a country by the code of 3-letters that by the one of 2-letters.
Internet top level domain names for countries are 2-letter codes, derived from the ISO list. More people know something about the internet country codes than about 3-letter ISO codes. More or less related are the US Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 10-4 codes, also 2-letter codes.
"Jonas Melian" <jonas.esp@googlemail.com> writes:
It contains a two-letter code which is recommended as the general purpose code, _a three-letter code which has better mnenomic properties_
But that part of the TZ database is not intended for end-users. It is intended for internal processing. So its mnemonic properties are not that relevant. I just now ran my host's time zone setup tool. (I'm running Debian stable, a fairly old GNU/Linux distribution.) The tool gave me a map of the world with cities and islands scattered over it, along with a list of text time zone names like "America/La_Paz". Nowhere did it use two-letter codes. If my experience is typical, changing from two-letter codes to three-letter codes would not help typical users. It would affect only developers. But most developers, I think, would prefer two-letter codes, even if were no cost to switching th three-letter codes. They're more familiar with the two-letter codes, due to their widespread use in Internet domain names. There's a nonzero cost to switching. Existing software reads zone.tab and iso3166.tab and expects these files to have a certain format. To switch, we need a compelling technical reason. So far, I haven't seen one.
<<On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 11:38:01 -0800, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> said:
There's a nonzero cost to switching. Existing software reads zone.tab and iso3166.tab and expects these files to have a certain format. To switch, we need a compelling technical reason. So far, I haven't seen one.
Perhaps more to the point, existing software reads zone.tab and uses its own table of ISO 3166-1 codes, and expects zone.tab to have a certain format. -GAWollman
participants (7)
-
Andy Lipscomb -
Garrett Wollman -
Jonas Melian -
Markus Scherer -
Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E] -
Oscar van Vlijmen -
Paul Eggert