[Pymoney-general] Structure for per-country currency information

[Facundo B. <fac...@gm...>]

I proposed originally that we have a structure, after parsing the ISO list =
at
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/currencycodeslist.html?pri=
ntable=3Dtrue
like the following:

 {..., "ARS": ("ARGENTINA", "Argentine Peso", "032"), ... }

Darek Suchojad noted that the first code, as different countrys have the
exactly same currency, will be reapeated (which is a problem as we're using
a dictionary), so he proposed:

{..., "ARS": (("ARGENTINA", "Argentine Peso", "032"),), ...
      "USD": (("AMERICAN SAMOA", "US Dollar", "840"),
               ("BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY", "US Dollar", "840"),
                ...
             ), ...
}

Jeff Kowalczyk went a step further and suggested a new denomination for
currencies, just to make them univocal, proposing the following structure
(note how he flattened the structure).

{ ...,
 "AS-USD" : ("AMERICAN SAMOA", "US Dollar", "840"),
 "IO-USD" : ("BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY", "US Dollar", "840"),
 "US-USD" : ("UNITED STATES",  "US Dollar", "840"),
 ...,
}

This brings the need of another structure, to map the original currency
string to the invented ones, something like

{ ..., "USD":("AS-USD", "IO-USD", "US-USD"), ...}


I have issues with the three structures proposed so far:

1. Mine: Clearly wrong! The currency string is repeated and we can not use
   it as a dictionary key.

2. Darek's: Don't like the not-flat property

3. Jeff's: Brings another layer of complexity: How do you choose (as a
   developer) and how do you predict (as user) the inserted two letters?


Before chosing one, keeping proposing others, or discuss the actual ones, I
think that we must focus in specifying what we need:

1. What information we want in the structure (or structures)

2. The standard source of that information

3. How we want to access that information

Then, we could specify the structure/s that we'll use.

So, start shooting! :)

Regards,

.    Facundo

Blog: http://www.taniquetil.com.ar/plog/
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