I too like the idea. Two relatively grumpy sounding (but ultimately rather interesting cautions): (I may cross-post this to PIJIP copyright for those interested in the legal nuances)
1. IP laws concerning flags. The last I looked into it, it was a bit of a morass. I confess I didn't look very deeply but I did look into flag-law in the US and the UK a bit. It was not encouraging, from a sort of corporate perspective. National treatments differ. In the US, even though the federal government is prohibited from owning copyrights, the regulation of the appearance of the US flag is (or at least it was when I looked) under the exclusive authority of the President (whose perspectives on "flag propriety" may change from administration to administration) . It seems like something similar existed for the UK but with the crown owning those rights of regulation. I don't know what the UN has to say about it, but the scary scenario for me, as I was looking into it, was suppose someone using what was demonstrably one of my flags upsets the government of the sovereign nation of Pastu-Ta-Lali and then. before the Hague, I am held liable for the property damage caused by the bearers of said flag in the small revolt sponsored by unknown interests? Consider the complexity that the Unicode folks ran into in trying to come up with a proper treatment of Cambodian script. It was complicated, and the story is fascinating if I could ever track down the person I heard talk about it. That was one concern. The other is the definition of colors in countries that might not recognize Pantone nor sRGB, nor "registration black" Not so much as a "copy" right but more of a "derivation" right akin to both trademark and copyright law. In the US it is neither trademark nor copyright but "flag law". Good luck finding an attorney well versed in that boutique specialty. 2. Most national flags are pretty darned rectilinear, but not all. If one starts drawing the US flag in Inkscape, instead of something remarkably inspired and concise like http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg (whoever did it did it the geometry with inspiration!) we might end up with 250K of polygons for the stripes that don't quite align at high resolutions. One would also want to pay attention to the national laws that stipulate the actual geometry (as well as the colors) and to make sure that the semantics and history are properly respected through <title> and <desc> tags. (I've seen some pretty crappy versions of the Mexican flag, for example) It's a wonderful project, and if one were to work within the umbrella provided by Wikipedia's longstanding distribution of flag-pictures, you'd probably be okay. The first time I saw a collection of national flags in thumbnail gif format was about 25 years ago. I winced. At first I was happy since it was so "international" but then I saw how bad some of the colors looked so terribly bad. The versions on the web seem to have improved since then, but nations do have their laws and their nationalism to contend with. Get some UN funding (a grant would be nice) and let's go do it up right! Am I being too cautious? Probably, Cheers David [ http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/svg/text/StwelveX3.svg ] From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Cameron Laird Sent: Saturday, October 08, 2011 5:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [svg-developers] national flags for use in db? perhaps ip-to-country.csv On Sat, Oct 08, 2011 at 09:37:38PM +0100, Jonathan Chetwynd wrote: . . . > has anyone already created, or is anyone interested to help create a > tight** svgz file of national flags searchable by id of country > eg with ip-to-country.csv . . . I like the idea. Phaseit might be able to assign an Inkscape adept to such a project over the next month or so. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ ----- To unsubscribe send a message to: [email protected] -or- visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers and click "edit my membership" ----Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/svg-developers/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
