William_J_G Overington <wjgo underscore 10009 at btinternet dot com> wrote:
> Hopefully the people in charge of the codes to be used for the flags > will agree never to reuse a code. Normally I would completely agree about the need for archival stability. In this case, however, we are talking about flags used primarily as emoji, like the one in my signature block. People will pop these flags into their text messages alongside "party" or "celebration" icons. I'm not sure the requirement for stability is quite as critical as it might be. However... > Whether they do or not, would it be good to add an option into the tag > coding of the flags whereby at the end one may optionally add TAG > COLON then at least four TAG DIGIT characters, those TAG DIGIT > characters representing the year? It's remarkable how similar this suggestion is to a discussion between Philippe and me two years ago. There is currently no well-known coding system for flags -- the owner of the "Flags of the World" site doesn't know of one -- and there should be. (The term "flag code" already has two meanings that are very different from this, which makes it hard to find information.) Getting UTC to accept the extended syntax of a standard like this would, of course, require that the standard gain reasonable acceptance and popularity beforehand. Requiring it to become an ISO standard might not be unreasonable. If you want to discuss this specific idea further, please write to me privately and *not to the list*. -- Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO 🇺🇸
