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[Richard Wordingham]

On Wed, 20 May 2015 17:29:28 +0100 (BST)
William_J_G Overington <wjgo_10009 at btinternet.com> wrote:

> This could also be of use now so as to display such items as the flag
> of the USA at various historical periods. It would be helpful if a
> particular year were chosen for normalization purposes: for example
> for the flag of the USA used in the 1940s and most of the 1950s have
> one particular year rather than just using any year within the period
> when that particular design of flag was in use.

That is a singularly poor example.  An example that would jar is the
use of the tricolour to represent France in an account of the Hundred
Years' War, or the present German flag to represent Germany in an
account of the Second World War.

A problem we have is that flags are not stable enough to use in plain
text that is to last a human lifetime.

> It has been speculated that had Scotland left the United Kingdom as a
> result of the referendum last year (in the event, the people voted
> for Scotland to stay in the United Kingdom) that the flag of the
> United Kingdom would have become changed, though some people
> advocated keeping it the same anyway.

It won't be kept if England secedes from the UK so as to leave the
European Union. It may not be a likely outcome, but it's certainly a
possibility.

Richard.