Subject: [Ltru] Any information on SF?

From: Mark Davis ⌛ <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 11:16:16 -0700

(That's not "San Francisco" or "Science Fiction", or any confluence of the
two.)

We're in the process of updating to the new IANA registry, and I was
cross-checking to http://www.iso.org/iso/iso-3166-1_decoding_table. The code

SF stands out.

*Transitionally reserved*
BU    Burma
CS    SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO
NT    Neutral Zone
*SF    Finland     Not in IANA. CLDR maps to FI??
*TP    East Timor
YU    Yugoslavia
ZR    Zaire

I had first presumed that SF is not included because it was withdrawn before
RFC1766. But SF is not even listed in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-3 as a retired code. (ISO makes it
exceptionally painful, as we all know, to get access to 3166-3:
http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/background_on_iso_3166/iso_3166-3.htm).
Note that http://www.iso.org/iso/iso-3166-1_decoding_table definitely has
some oddities. For example, instead of "officially assigned", for two items
it has "officiellement attribué". So for all we know, SF is just a mistake
in that table!

Does anyone know more about the code SF?

For comparison, here are the "Exceptionally Reserved", two of which are
obsolete codes.

*Exceptionally Reserved*
AC    Ascension Island     ok
CP    Clipperton Island     ok
DG    Diego Garcia     ok
EA    Ceuta, Melilla     ok
EU    European Union     ok
*FX    France, Metropolitan     Deprecated in IANA: IANA maps to FR
*IC    Canary Islands     ok
*SU    USSR     Deprecated in IANA: CLDR maps to RU AM AZ BY EE GE KZ KG LV
LT MD TJ TM UA UZ
*TA    Tristan da Cunha     ok
*UK    UNITED KINGDOM     Not in IANA. CLDR maps to GB*

Mark

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 11:31:46 -0700

Hi -

As technical contributor...

My suggestion would be to not worry about it.

As co-chair...

It's *way* too late and too unlikely to be the source of
any kind of problem to open it up as an issue here.  If
someone thinks it would be *useful* to add it to the registry,
[email-masked] would be the place to do it.

Randy

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Davis ⌛" <[email-masked]>
To: "LTRU Working Group" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 11:16 AM
Subject: [Ltru] Any information on SF?

SF stands out.

*Exceptionally Reserved*
AC    Ascension Island     ok
CP    Clipperton Island     ok
DG    Diego Garcia     ok
EA    Ceuta, Melilla     ok
EU    European Union     ok

Mark

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---

From: Mark Davis ⌛ <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 11:34:21 -0700

I am NOT suggesting adding it to the registry. I just wanted to find out
what it is, to see if we need a mapping in CLDR.

Mark

---

From: Kent Karlsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:51:55 +0200

According to 
http://www.iso.org/iso/support/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/iso-3166-1_
decoding_table.htm#SF,
it appears to have been withdrawn in 1995.

SF  Finland         1995-09

Why was there ever such a code? Well, "SF" would be an abbreviation for
"Suomi/Finland".
"Suomi" is "Finland" in Finnish. Erkki might know more.

I've seen it recommended/used way back when (presumably before 1996...). It
was used for vehicle country
codes too (current code "FIN", according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_vehicle_registration_code
s).
Both sets of country codes (ISO, vehicle) have been used for paper mail.

    /kent k

Den 2009-08-06 20.34, skrev "Mark Davis" <[email-masked]>:

> I am NOT suggesting adding it to the registry. I just wanted to find out what
> it is, to see if we need a mapping in CLDR.
> 
> Mark
> 
>

---

From: "Jukka K. Korpela" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 21:56:39 +0300

Mark Davis ⌛ wrote:

> I had first presumed that SF is not included because it was withdrawn
> before RFC1766. But SF is not even listed in
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-3 as a retired code.

"SF" was previously used as a country code for Finland in some contexts, 
like car plates and postal addresses. I would expect such usage to be so old 
and dated that it can be ignored. In particular, in postal addresses, it was 
replaced in 1993 by "FIN" (which in turn was replaced by "FI" in 2004). The 
Internet domain for Finland has been ".fi" from the beginning.

("SF" was formed from "Suomi Finland", i.e. from the name of the country in 
its two official languages, Finnish and Swedish. We often thought that 
others thought that it actually came from "Soviet Finland"; I'm half serious 
in suggesting that this was one of the reasons for moving to "FIN" or "FI".)

-- 
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

---

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 15:08:21 -0400

> (That's not "San Francisco" or "Science Fiction", or any confluence of the

I shudder to think what "san fiction" would be about (changing a litterbox?),
and as for "SAN fiction", I can scarcely conceive anything more tedious.  :-)

> cross-checking to http://www.iso.org/iso/iso-3166-1_decoding_table. The code

The "decoding table" at
http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/iso-3166-1_decoding_table.htm
gives the enigmatic date "1995-09" in the Notes column for SF, suggesting
that the code was reserved at that time.  However, the code FI has
been around since at least 1986, when the Finland domain name of .fi
was established, and quite likely much earlier.

I'd guess that the code stands for "Suomi/Finland".

-- 
John Cowan      <[email-masked]>       http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
                Charles li reis, nostre emperesdre magnes,
                Set anz totz pleinz ad ested in Espagnes.