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> well we have the proper name in this database over here". And so could the bank. I expect this is how they will eventually solve the issue - the customer-vis

by toyg 5y ago

> well we have the proper name in this database over here". And so could the bank. I expect this is how they will eventually solve the issue - the customer-visible parts will be insulated from the old system with stuff that can handle Unicode. Chances are they currently don't have such insulation, producing documents with the wrong names, hence the complaint (bank statements are often used as proof of ID). Btw this is not a stupid law. Accents are important parts of languages, the tech to handle them has been around for decades now, there is no excuse for willful illiteracy.

lokedhs 5y ago
It's more than that. In many languages, they aren't accents but different letters. In Swedish, the letter ä is not just an a with two dots over it. It's a completely different letter, pronounced differently and is sorted in a different part of the alphabet. Changing ä to a could compeltely change the meaning of a word. For example, "räka" means shrimp, while "raka" means straight. The same goes for names. Misspelling the name by not using the correct characters is frustrating and shouldn't be necessary when we have Unicode. I think everyone can imagine how annoying it would be to have a random letter in one's own name be replaced by some other letter. Yes, I'm personally annoyed by this, since my name also has one of these letters.