phone types]

[Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet]

=> Looks good.  And under this system, am I correct in thinking that my U.S.
=> number would be encoded as:
=> 
=>                       +1 781 2623075   ?

  Yes.

=One possible problem is there's no way for me to know if the person
=entering the phone number is using this form or not.  In such a case, I
=don't know whether the number after the last space is part of the number
=of the extension.
=
=    +31 20 535 4444

  True, but you can never deal with that properly anyway, because someone
  might prefer to not include an extension - for whatever reason.

=Does this person sit at extension 4444, or are they merely using one of
=the the local Dutch method?  Unless you can *enforce* the canonical
=form, then perhaps it's not so bad to diferentiate the extension
=somehow?
=
=   +31 20 535 4444
=   +31 20 535 4444 x427
=
=In case you were wondering.  :)

  Should I ? :-)

=Shane

  Actually that's the reason why I asked Andrei to cross-check against the
  RIPE-DB definition, which is:

>Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2001 11:32:27 +0100
>From: Andrei Robachevsky <andrei at ripe.net>
> [ ... ]
>In the RIPE Database the following syntax is accepted for phone numbers:
>
>+ followed by numbers separated by the whitespace, "-" or ".". "()" are
>also accepted. The number may be followed by the keyword "ext." and
>another number (for extension).

  So, all of the 3 possibilites
  +31 20 535 4444
  +31 20 535 4444 427
  +31 20 535 4444 ext. 427
  
  as well as
  +31.20.535.4444
  +31-20-535-4444-427
  +31 (20) 535 4444 ext.427
  +31 (20) 535 4444-427

  would be acceptable.
  
  I guess we would even be prepared to extend "our" format to allow "x" as
  well if that is what the "+1 region" prefers....
  
  Wilfried.