This package aims to provide the list of the country and language
(and currency) names in one place, rather than repeated in many
programs throughout Debian.

Currently there are lists of languages and countries embedded in:

- Gnome Libs
- bootfloppies / PGI
- KDE
- Gnumeric
- Gnucash
- ...

This leads to about a dozen lists of 200 languages, translated
into >30 languages ... not very efficient. The aim of this patch
is to create a single "gettext" domain "iso-639" which contains
the translations of language names, and one "iso-3166" listing
the translations of Country  names.

So the plan is then to be able to use
	dgettext("iso-639", language_name)
to get the correct translations.

The files
/usr/share/iso-codes/iso-3166.tab
/usr/share/iso-codes/iso-639.tab
/usr/share/iso-codes/iso-4217.tab
/usr/share/iso-codes/iso-3166-1.tab
/usr/share/iso-codes/iso-3166-2.tab
/usr/share/iso-codes/iso-3166-3.tab

store the files in simple tabbed list format, for easy changing.

PLEASE NOTE: THE FORMAT IS CURRENTLY IN FLUX.
PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR IF YOU INTEND TO USE IT

The files

ISO-3166
--------

This lists the 2-letter country code and "short" country name.

ISO-639
-------

This lists the 2-letter and 3-letter language codes and language names

ISO-4217
--------
This lists the currency codes and names

ISO-historic-4217
-----------------
This lists previous currrency codes, the currency names, and dates of changes

ISO-3166-1
----------
This lists further elements of the ISO-3166 standard: further country codes
(numeric) and offical long versions of country names. 

ISO 3166-2
-----------
The ISO 3166 standard includes a "Country Subdivision Code",
giving a code for the names of the principal administrative
subdivisions of the countries coded in ISO 3166.

ISO 3166-2 is a set of files giving this ISO 3166-2 standard:
(available at http://www.din.de/gremein/nabd/iso3166ma/a3ptnorm.html)
this is a standard that gives short codes for provinces,
etc. within a country. As these also list the provinces, Counties,
etc. within a country, they could also be used to provide a
drop-down list when someone is entering addresses...

ISO-3166-3
----------
This contains former country name details: their names, previous codes
and dates of changes.



---------------------------------------------------------------------
DEVELOPING USING PKGCONFIG
--------------------------

A pkgconfig file has been included to aid developing with this package.
You can detect the prefix where the translations have been placed using

$ pkg-config --variable=prefix iso-codes
/usr

You can detect which sets of translation (domain) files have been installed using
$ pkg-config --variable=domains iso-codes
iso-639 iso-3166 iso-4217 iso-3166-1 iso-3166-2 iso-3166-3






--
Alastair McKinstry, <mckinstry@debian.org>, 2003-12-24
     
     
