Re: Tag characters

L2/15-145R says:

> On some platforms that support a number of emoji flags, there is
> substantial demand to support additional flags for the following:
> [...]
> Certain supra-national regions, such as Europe (European Union flag)
> or the world (e.g. United Nations flag). These can be represented
> using UN M49 3-digit codes, for example "150" for Europe or "001" for
> World.

These are uncomfortable equivalence classes. Not all countries in Europe
are members of the European Union, and the concept of "United Nations"
is not really the same by definition as "all countries in the world."

The remaining UN M.49 code elements that don't have a 3166-1 equivalent
seem wholly unsuited for this mechanism (and those that do, don't need
it). There are no flags for "Middle Africa" or "Latin America and the
Caribbean" or "Landlocked developing countries."

Some trans-national organizations might _almost_ seem as if they could
be shoehorned into an M.49 code element, like identifying 035
"South-Eastern Asia" with the ASEAN flag, but this would be problematic
for the same reasons as 150 and 001.

Among the ISO 3166-1 "exceptionally reserved" code elements are "EU" for
"European Union" and "UN" for "United Nations." If these flags are the
use cases, why not simply use those alpha-2 code elements, instead of
burdening the new mechanism with the 3-digit syntax?

--
Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO 🇺🇸