2.4 KiB
Introduction
This package is a collection of flags for BCP 47 region codes. Most people think of these as country flags, but there are a few codes / flags that do not correspond to countries. The flags are in SVG and PNG format and named by their BCP 47 region code, which for countries is the same as ISO 3166-2 country code.
The canonical way to get all region codes is to look for records in language-subtag-registry (which is downloaded from [0]) with the following fields:
Type: region
Subtag: [A-Z]{2}
AND NOT Description: Private use
AND NOT Deprecated: .*
Regions not in that repository can be added to language-subtag-private. One such region has been added.
Some regions do not have their own flag. In such cases, they are symlinked to the best flag to represent them, which in most cases is the flag of their regional or political parent. These are listed in file ALIASES.
The flags are downloaded from Wikipedia. When Wikipedia flags were copyrighted, we worked we Wikipedia editors to either relicense them, or drew / sourced and uploaded new public-domain versions. In particular, the license for these flags were resolved for the initial import:
Montenegro Nicaragua Sint Maarten Ascension Island Lesotho Kosovo
Scripts
The script regions.py lists all regions with their metadata.
The script regions-wp.py shows the Wikipedia URL for the flag page.
The script missing.sh shows all such regions that we don't have flags for.
The script make-aliases.sh makes symlinks for regions that use flag of another region.
The script download-wp.py downloads missing flags from Wikipedia and generating optimized SVG and PNG versions.
Updating
If new regions are needed, update language-subtag-registry [0], or add new regions to language-subtag-private before. Then update ALIASES and ALIASES-WP as needed.
If Wikipedia's flag is under Creative Commons, work with Wikipedia editors to relicense it to public domain. If the flag is not explicitly marked public_domain but otherwise exempt from copyright (typically, because of national laws), make a note of it in file COPYING.
To download missing flags, run download-wp.py.
To update to latest flags from Wikipedia, delete the html, svg, and png directories, then run make-aliases.sh followed by download-wp.py.
License
See file COPYING for details.
References
[0] http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry/language-subtag-registry