Re: Flag tags

On 5/31/2012 3:29 PM, Philippe Verdy wrote:
> 2012/5/31 Asmus Freytag<asmusf_at_ix.netcom.com>:
>> On 5/31/2012 12:07 PM, Karl Pentzlin wrote:
>>> Am Donnerstag, 31. Mai 2012 um 20:09 schrieb John H. Jenkins:
>>>
>>> JHJ> <tongue-in-cheek>
>>> JHJ> ... that because some
>>> JHJ> countries have currency symbols with decidated code points, other
>>> JHJ> countries will make *new* currency symbols and demand that *they*
>>> JHJ> get dedicated code points ...
>>>
>>> Seriously speaking, flag symbols and currency signs are completely
>>> different topics.
>>>
>>> Every country has exactly one flag, right now.
> This is wrong if you consider their dependencies. Some dependencies
> legally have their own flag used *instead* of the flag for the
> main/metropolitan part of the country. So countries can have several
> flags.
And some have well established flags for their constituent parts -
because they arose of a
federation of entities.
>
> Then consider that countries may also have several flags for different
> usages (national flag, civil flag, naval flag...)

Good point.
>
> Also the same flag may be shared by different political entities (e.g.
> The European Union reuses the flag of the Council of Europe, with
> permission, and made it one of its official emblems). Some flags are
> also shared without permission, because the original design was not
> protected internaitonally or had fallen in public domain (including in
> the country of origin).
Examples?

> Flags have strong political issues that are out of scope for encoding
> directly in the UCS. They are not stable across history, so they
> should be versioned, but most frequent uses will omit the precise
> versioning, so that flags will be instantly replaced at any time (e.g.
> if you encode a flag for US, how many stars will there be on it ?
Obviously these are all glyph variants?

A./

> Libya changed its flag recently, returning to an older flag ; in many
> cases it will not really matter, but if you have to deal with encoded
> texts that are also versioned themselves, it will not be acceptable to
> have flag designs freely interchanged as it would cause confusion :
> consider the case of countries that appeared in the history as part of
> a split or merge, in an article speaking about their history, and
> identifying the armies and generals with their respective flag...).
>
Received on Thu May 31 2012 - 19:10:38 CDT