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 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 >