[WEB4LIB] Re: Standard format for such things as Telephone Numbers?

[Chris Gray]

[As a side note, I can't seem to find the message that initiated this
thread in the sunsite archive.  Even searching on text quoted from the
message, I only get the three responses posted so far.]

Data like telephone numbers, differs from place to place in ways that
cannot be reduced to one international standard.  The effort to make this
diversity more tractable for computation is called internationalization
(i18n) and localization (l10n).  This is not fully realized and different
software packages and environments have a variety of capabilities to
handle locales.  You need to look into the capabilities of whatever
software you're using.

You can get some idea of the current fluidity of this ideal from a quote
from <http://www.i18nguy.com/locales/>:

"In the table below, there is reference to 'attributes or behaviors' that
might be associated with locale. Depending on who you talk to, this can
include (in no particular order):

"date format, time format, time zone, calendar, number format and digits,
currency & format, collation, character set, case rules, hyphenation,
justification, quote character, title & address & telephone format, user
interface language, writing direction, list separator, license plate
format, form layout (paper size), units of measurement (pounds, grams,
stones, inches, meters, etc.), keyboard, input method....

"Some would restrict locale to language related issues (quote character,
writing direction), others use the term to refer to the larger set of
targets for internationalization within applications."

Some resources for the curious (and of practical value mainly for software
developers) are:

Issues and Advantages of the use of Locales in Software
<http://www.i18nguy.com/locales/>

Common XML Locale Repository
<http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/locale/>

OpenI18N.org
<http://www.openi18n.org/>

"general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be
liberal in what you accept from others."  --Jon Postel, 1980, RFC 761, TCP

On Mon, 27 Jan 2003, Peter Murray wrote:

> --On Tuesday, January 21, 2003 2:43 PM -0800 "Paul (BRI)"
> <phishmeh at briconsultingroup.com> wrote:
> > I was looking for standards on the format for such things as
> > telephone numbers.
>
> I've never run across such a thing, but I do know that the maximum
> size of a phone number is 15 digits.  Getting a list of country codes
> is easy enough, but everything after the country code, though,
> depends on, well, the country.
>
>
> Peter
>
> P.S.: Thanks, Shirl, for the international addresses site!
> --
> Peter Murray                      http://www.pandc.org/peter/work/
> Director, Library Information Technology Services     860-486-0395
> University of Connecticut Libraries            Storrs, Connecticut
>