>> Then I don't understand changes such as:
>>
>> -    'chinese-s':                            'zh_CN.eucCN',
>> +    'chinese-s':                            'zh_CN.gb2312',
>>
>> or
>>
>> -    'sp':                                   'sr_CS.ISO8859-5',
>> -    'sp_yu':                                'sr_CS.ISO8859-5',
>> +    'sp':                                   'sr_RS.ISO8859-5',
>> +    'sp_yu':                                'sr_RS.ISO8859-5',
>>
>> The .test_locale_alias() checks that the normalize()
>> function returns the the alias given in the alias table.

As mentioned earlier, the purpose of the alias table is to map
*normalized* local names to the C runtime string, which in some
cases use different encoding names that we use in Python.

> It also test normalize(locale_alias[localname]) == locale_alias[localname]
> == normalize(localname). I.e. that applying normalize() twice doesn't
> change a result.

That's not intended. The normalize() function is supposed to
prepare the locale for the lookup. It's not supposed to be applied
to the looked up value.

About the devangari special case:
This has been in the X11 file for ages and still is ...
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libX11/tree/nls/locale.alias.pre