Re: Adding RAINBOW FLAG to Unicode (Fwd: Representing Additional Types of Flags)

From: Noah Slater <nslater_at_tumbolia.org>
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 2015 12:33:03 +0000

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like Philippe's core argument is that
geopolitical entities and flags (as a specific instances of a design, in
the heraldic sense) are disjoint. And that using geopolitical codes to
refer to these designs is inherently unstable.

On Thu, 2 Jul 2015 at 13:26 Philippe Verdy <verdy_p_at_wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> It was not just about it but on the fact that nothing is solved and for
> things that Unicode does not want to support, there should be a better way
> using existing standards to bind some object with semantics taken from a
> blind but easily parsable object (here an URI ,without the need to reinvent
> a way to encode it, just a plain URI just surrounded by a couple of
> controls). No need then to describe what will be in that URI, it will just
> need to be interpreted as a unique indentifier within some namespace.
> With that it will be possible to create catalogs and standardize a few of
> them. The system will not be limited to geopolitical entities. And nobody
> will need to support all the namespaces or even to perform any external
> query to some rogue server delivering malicious content. The URI could
> still embed a small image using the "data:" URI scheme.
> Also I criticize the fact of using RIS to decribe a "standard" feature in
> the UCS, when they will be bound to unstable ISO standards which are
> already politically biased. RIS was a bad choice the way it was specified,
> and even its specification does not fully conforms to these ISO standards.
>
> 2015-07-02 14:05 GMT+02:00 Mark Davis ☕️ <mark_at_macchiato.com>:
>
>> Ok. I wasn't clear enough. Certainly boundaries are political and
>> relevant, as is the fact that they change. What is not relevant is talking
>> about particular country's motivations and actions.
>>
>> Moreover, you insist about writing a tome about this. In other words,
>> TL;DR.
>>
>> Mark <https://google.com/+MarkDavis>
>>
>> *— Il meglio è l’inimico del bene —*
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 11:01 AM, Philippe Verdy <verdy_p_at_wanadoo.fr>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> The political subject is immediately related to the designation of flags
>>> and their association to ISO 3166-1 and -2 encoded entities. Even if you
>>> don't like it, this is very political and for a standard seeking for
>>> stability, I wonder how any flag (directly bound to specific political
>>> entities at specific dates and within some boundaries which may be
>>> contested) can be related to ISO 3166 and its instability (and the fact
>>> that ISO 3166 entities have in fact also no defined borders, so that ISO
>>> 3166-2 is just a political point of view from the current ruler of the
>>> current ISO 3166-1 entity).
>>>
>>> All this topic is political. In fact the real flags are not even encoded
>>> with RIS, not even for current nations (and there's still a problem to know
>>> what is a recognized nation, even when just considering the UN definition.
>>> Political entities are defined but with fuzzy borders, they just represent
>>> in fact some local governments, not necessarily their lands, people, or
>>> cultures, and in some cases they are in exil or not even ruling: their seat
>>> in the UN is vacant and they exist only on the paper, but even UN members
>>> disagree about which treaty they recognize).
>>>
>> ​...​
>>
>>
>
>
Received on Thu Jul 02 2015 - 07:34:16 CDT

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