The encoding of the Welsh flag

[Ken Whistler via Unicode]

On 11/21/2018 8:00 AM, William_J_G Overington via Unicode wrote:
> Yet the interoperability does not derive from an International Standard.

The interoperability that enabled your mail to be delivered to me derives in part from the MIME standard (RFC 2045 et seq.) which is not an International Standard, but is instead maintained by the Networking Working Group of IETF.

The interoperability that enabled me to read the content of your mail derives from the HTML standard, which is not an International Standard, but is instead maintained by the W3C (a consortium).

The interoperability of any flag emoji embedded in that content derives from Unicode Technical Standard #51, which is not an International Standard, but is instead maintained by the Unicode Consortium.

These standards are all widely used *internationally*, but they are not an International Standard, which is effectively a moniker claimed by ISO for itself and its standards.

But in this day and age, expecting all technology, including technology related to computational processing, distribution, interchange, and rendering of text, to wait around for any related standard to be canonized as an International Standard is just silly. The world of technology does not work that way, and frankly, folks should be damn glad that it doesn't.

--Ken