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It's 8:30 in Perth and Sydney is half an hour from New Year. My lady partner has busied herself this afternoon making a pavlova which looks spectacular. Meanwhile I've had a few sherbets and now we are dressed and ready to go out to celebrate with friends. She has also offered to drive which is a real bonus. See you in 2018 which I hope is going to bring good things for you all.
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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Enjoy! (Especially the pavlova)
Happy New Year to you and yours, I hope it brings the best of all things.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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So here I am updating a list of a countries in a database I'm working on (fun stuff) to be all recent and fancy etc. I decided "hey, why not get all official and go with ISO standards." Cool right?
Well, therein makes one wonder. If you look at the list of ISO-3166-1[^] codes... UK is gone. So is Scotland, etc. You can search for ISO 3166-2:GB on the page to see the entry I'm referring to. Now it's GB for the whole darn mess. I know the UK isn't a country per sé, but when I show a list of countries as a selection on a form in a webpage and it doesn't say something like United Kingdom or Scotland and just a blanket "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" in a select box that means everything and the kitchen sink, I can't help but think WTF.
So, let's say I want to store the address - including country - for a user in a database who lives in Scotland. Should I now be saying: John Doe, XYZ, in the friggin United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Seems kinda silly to not just say Scotland, right?
Jeremy Falcon
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Just say "Scotland, England". The Scots won't mind. Honest.
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I only know one scotsman.
He'd be happy, it would give him a reason to use sarcasm.
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Sarcasm? He'd thank you with a Glasgow kiss....
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It would be an Inverness kiss in that case.
Except he's actually very peaceful outside his verbal skills.
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More seriously…. if you think that’s bad enough, try adding a drop-down selector for UK counties – it’s next to impossible. Scotland and Wales both have two incompatible systems for defining counties/”administrative districts”, and while one may be “official”, try telling that to upset users because you used one and not the other…
And, going back to your original point and my reply, I once had a postcard addressed to me in “…. Wales, England”. The most astonishing thing was that it actually got delivered!
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I should, but to use Scotland directly now I'd have to re-index my database, which is not fun.
Question, how stupid would it look if I ever addressed something in Scotland for instance like this...
Mr. John C. Doe
123 Some Street
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ?
Jeremy Falcon
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It would be daft to put all that - you can just use "UK" or "United Kingdom" alone. There is no need to add Scotland at all, though no one will actually laugh if you put "Scotland, UK".
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Ok cool. Thanks for the help man. 
Jeremy Falcon
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Well, you wouldn't spell out, "The United States of America", either I bet.
I don't think that standard is designed for your purpose.
If I recall correctly, my wife writes "Europe" on the cards she sends to relatives in Austria and that small wet island. 
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Yeah totally. It's way too verbose. Rather than re-key stuff, I just decided to add a shorthand column to the DB. So if for whatever reason I need to show the country at least it won't read like a paragraph or novel.
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Great minds think alike... I totally watched that same exact video... just to make sure that if I "engineer" something it came out ok.
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Thanks man, turns out I watched that same exact video. Totally wish I would've had your offer about a week ago. I just spent the entirety of this week cleaning up and tweaking my geo data (to the tune of 4million-ish cities) with all this new fancy ISO 3166 stuff. I have a about 3.5k off the wall places I have no real clue wtf their proper M49 code is though. I ended up using some private ones I found off of an XML feed on unicode.org.
Just out of curiosity, how are you naming your "regional" table that contains states, provinces, etc? I can't call mine State and I don't think Province will apply to every country in the world.
Oh the joys of making an international app.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: how are you naming your "regional" table
Subcountry.
A few years ago we developed scripts to import and clean geo-data from several sources. Cities, subcountries, countries, regions, continents. The lot. PITA.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: Subcountry
I called mine province, but I like the idea of making it more generic.
Chris Maunder wrote: A few years ago we developed scripts to import and clean geo-data from several sources. Cities, subcountries, countries, regions, continents. The lot. PITA.
If I ever have to do this again for this DB, I'm gonna follow suit.
Jeremy Falcon
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"State" or "State/region" seems to be in common use. As you say, there is no one word used by all countries - "county" in the UK, "department" in France, etc - but "state" is pretty much universally recognised, I think.
Likewise, "Zip code" seems also to be gaining universal acceptance, though many places still prefer "Post code", so maybe "Zip/Post code" is better for that.
Only thing you can be sure if is that no matter what you do, someone will be upset....
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Isn't a state a sovereign country?
Unless you're from the USA.
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A_Griffin wrote: Only thing you can be sure if is that no matter what you do, someone will be upset....
 Wise words.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: So, let's say I want to store the address - including country - for a user in a database who lives in Scotland. Should I now be saying: John Doe, XYZ, in the friggin United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? ...
The information that I have says that John Doe does not exist in the UKOGBANI. It is Joe Bloggs there...
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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H.Brydon wrote: It is Joe Bloggs there...
Or rather, "the man on the Clapham omnibus". 
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I note that both France and Germany are on the ISO 3166 maintenance agency (see ISO 3166 - Wikipedia ). Could Brexit have something to do with it?
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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