Flag tags with U+1F3F3 and subtypes

[Doug Ewell]

L2/15-145R says:

> In CLDR 28, LDML will define a unicode_subdivision_subtag which also
> provides validity criteria for the codes used for regional
> subdivisions (see CLDR ticket #8423). When representing regional
> subdivisions using ISO 3166-2 codes, only those codes that are valid
> for the LDML unicode_subdivision_subtag should be used.

The preliminary subdivisions.xml file includes entries like this:

<subgroup type="GB" contains="UKM GBN SCT EAW ENG WLS NIR"/>
<subgroup type="GB" subtype="SCT" contains="NLK RFW PKN ANS FAL [...] />
<subgroup type="GB" subtype="ENG" contains="GRE HAL HRY KHL NEL [...] />
<subgroup type="GB" subtype="WLS" contains="NTL RCT BGE NWP BGW [...] />
<subgroup type="GB" subtype="NIR" contains="NDN NYM ANT DOW DRY [...] />

In the United Kingdom case above, four of the "subtypes" are identified
with the four countries that make up the UK, and have counties
(districts, boroughs, etc.) "contained" below them. The other three
subtypes (UKM, GBN, EAW) don't really apply to flags and aren't
discussed further here.

Several of the nations in ISO 3166 have this kind of hierarchy. I
haven't checked whether any of them extend to more than two levels of
subdivisions.

Is the new mechanism intended to allow flag tags that include either
"subtype" values or "contains" values? For example:

<1F3F3 E0047 E0042 E002D E0053 E0043 E0054> (GB-SCT)
for the Scottish flag

and

<1F3F3 E0047 E0042 E002D E004E E004C E004B> (GB-NLK)
for the North Lanarkshire council area flag

--
Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO ����