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Re: <input type=“country” />

#21

Post by colanderman »

wlesieutre wrote: post #9
richardknop wrote: post #5

How do you define a country? Is it what current western world considers a country? Meaning whatever US and EU allies (puppets) + Japan decide? Definition of a country is very flexible thing and depends on current political order. I.e. is Tibet a country?

And what do you do when China shows up and says "We're blocking your download servers unless you take Taiwan out of the `country` input"? Better to not centralize the failure points that political actors can put pressure on for what gets to be a country or not.

Wouldn't that be a choice of the browser implementation, likely derived from the locale not unlike time zones?

Re: <input type=“country” />

#22

Post by toxican »

adtac wrote: post #10
donatj wrote: post #6

Just do longitude and latitude. Show a map of the earth and let them drop a pin. There is no reasonable way to get the world to agree on a single list. I doubt you could get browser developers to agree on a single list. For example Apple listing Taiwan in Safari could get Apple kicked out of mainland China. There is simply too much politics here to be tenable.

I know what we should do! A dropdown with every possible latitude and longitude combination.

I think we can do better. You know those comically bad volume sliders that were all the rage on reddit earlier this year? Let's apply that to entire list of long/lats!

Re: <input type=“country” />

#23

Post by dagw »

syncordie wrote: post #11
tyingq wrote: post #2

I have my doubts as to whether a generic solution solves this. The author notes some issues, like using it for place of birth. Now you need a temporal list for "countries that existed in year XYZ". There are similar issues for shipping. Not everyone ships everywhere. If the list is abstract and unknown to me, how do I whitelist/blacklist? Am I supposed to know that Scotland exists in the list or not? What if it's for…

An input list of all current passport issuing countries would be useful. The Scotland problem doesn't arise as they don't issue passports (the UK does).

And then someone tries to use it for an app where you have to select which national football you play for.

Re: <input type=“country” />

#24

Post by Touche »

tyingq wrote: post #2

I have my doubts as to whether a generic solution solves this. The author notes some issues, like using it for place of birth. Now you need a temporal list for "countries that existed in year XYZ". There are similar issues for shipping. Not everyone ships everywhere. If the list is abstract and unknown to me, how do I whitelist/blacklist? Am I supposed to know that Scotland exists in the list or not? What if it's for…

Someone on twitter suggested using the OS' own list of countries, working around the problem of the standard having to define what is/isn't a country. I think that's a reasonable solution.

Re: <input type=“country” />

#26

Post by masklinn »

baq wrote: post #12

timezones are a similar topic in the context of managing them, except there's less politics involved. i don't see how a global solution would look like, but i'm sure china will want a different list than russia and the US will want a different list from both of them, and that's only 3 countries out of 199 or 249 or however many are there at the moment (and then the temporal aspect comes into play.)

Timezones are downright trivial compared to this one, even if the heads-up can be very limited there's a central well-maintained database of them, and they have fairly low context-dependence: some historical context (timezones can "move around") and the socio-political context is limited to changes to timezones.

Re: <input type=“country” />

#28

Post by tangue »

donatj wrote: post #6

Just do longitude and latitude. Show a map of the earth and let them drop a pin. There is no reasonable way to get the world to agree on a single list. I doubt you could get browser developers to agree on a single list. For example Apple listing Taiwan in Safari could get Apple kicked out of mainland China. There is simply too much politics here to be tenable.

This would be great. For the political reason you've mentionned but also because for some countries there is no real conventions : you have to scan the whole list to select your country : I don't know how many hours of my life I've wasted looking for the various possibilities to name where I live " reunion / reunion island / la reunion / ile de la reunion / france la reunion / dom-tom reunion / french oversea territory reunion" Of course it's a edge case but your solution would be welcomed here.

This is a great idea

Re: <input type=“country” />

#29

Post by Y_Y »

richardknop wrote: post #5

How do you define a country? Is it what current western world considers a country? Meaning whatever US and EU allies (puppets) + Japan decide? Definition of a country is very flexible thing and depends on current political order. I.e. is Tibet a country?

> A puppet state is a metaphor of a state that is supposedly independent but is in fact dependent upon an outside power. It is nominally sovereign but effectively controlled by a foreign or otherwise alien power, for reasons such as financial interests.

Please tell us which European countries are US puppets.

Re: <input type=“country” />

#30

Post by kuschku »

maxxxxx wrote: post #14
donatj wrote: post #6

Just do longitude and latitude. Show a map of the earth and let them drop a pin. There is no reasonable way to get the world to agree on a single list. I doubt you could get browser developers to agree on a single list. For example Apple listing Taiwan in Safari could get Apple kicked out of mainland China. There is simply too much politics here to be tenable.

I wonder how many people could find a country on a world map and drop a pin. I bet it's not too many.

Depends on the country they are from.

In the EU, for example, I'd bet that everyone above the age of 12 could find their own country on a map

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