[ubl-ndrsc] [Fwd: Fwd: ISO 3166-1 -- Change of Alpha-3 Code Elementfor Romania]

[Phil Griffin <phil.griffin@ASN-1.com>]

FYI. This seems relevant to our work. And I believe
illustrates just how subject to change character
string code lists can be.

I note that while the numbers are not as expressive
perhaps for human readers, they are stable and work
reliably in software.

The numeric representation of the country identifier
is the only part that we rely on in canonical XML 
markup based on the ASN.1 schema. Only the numeric
portion of an abstract value such as "ROM(642)" 
need ever appear in the transfer syntax where there
is typically no human reader involved.

Perhaps we should consider that the characters to be
displayed or read by an application could be disjoint
from the value actually used for validation purposes.

That is, I might send you 642 and you might choose to
display "ROMANIA" or "ROM" or "ROU" or nothing based on
you own local copy of the characters that map to these
numeric values. 

Not a perfect solution, just an idea for consideration.

Phil

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• From: Francois Vuilleumier <fvuille@attglobal.net>
• To: moumg@ties.itu.int
• Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 18:38:08 +0100

From: "Wischhoefer Cord" <wischhoefer@iso.org>
Subject: ISO 3166-1  --  Change of Alpha-3 Code Element for Romania
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 10:58:28 +0100

Dear All,

For your information here's the latest on ISO 3166-1:

On request of the Romanian Government the ISO 3166/MA decided to change the ISO 3166-1 three-letter (alpha-3) code element for Romania from ROM to ROU.
 
The two-letter code element RO remains unchanged.

The change took effect on 1 February 2002.

Below are the URLs of the two language versions of the ISO 3166-1 Newsletter V-3 announcing the change.
 
English version of the Newsletter: http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/nl_pt1/nlv3e_rou.html
French version of the Newsletter: http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/nl_pt1/nlv3f_rou.html
 
Best regards

Cord Wischhöfer
ISO 3166/MA Secretary
 
Tel.: +41 22 749 72 33
Fax: +41 22 749 73 49
Email: wischhoefer@iso.org <mailto:wischhoefer@iso.org>

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