3 ms·

I’m skeptical. Calendar, date, time all have a finite set of values. Sure, it’s a complex, maddening morass, but ultimately it boils down to a small set of inte

I’m skeptical. Calendar, date, time all have a finite set of values. Sure, it’s a complex, maddening morass, but ultimately it boils down to a small set of integers, and a small set of standards to implement. Names are effectively a collection of arbitrary Unicode values with a fair number of complications (sorting, multiple names, etc), and there is no set of standards to draw upon for implementation.

cratermoon 3y ago
> there is no set of standards to draw upon for implementation Fair point. I used those examples mostly to acknowledge that programming has moved on from treating them as strings and integers. It's true that in the US there are few, if any, restrictions on naming. Only in 2017 did California, by law, allow names with diacriticals, as in José. However, in other countries there are interesting restrictions and patterns. Icelandic law, to give one example. > Names are effectively a collection of arbitrary Unicode values Well, yes, for just the string, but names are more than a sequence of characters. The structure of what a name is, and how it's presented, matters. for example given vs surname order, patronymic, Mongolian clan names, supported characters in CJK, and so forth. Those are things that are hard to get right, and having every organization doing i18n create its own one-off name handling code has led to chaos and a lack of interoperability internationally.
- macintux 3y ago
  I think there are a few possible outcomes of an attempt to standardize how computers deal with names. - Every programming language, database, etc implements something, but overall they’re not the same solution, leaving us mostly where we are today. - Some computer standard emerges, but fails because it’s not flexible enough for all the business and cultural needs, leaving us mostly where we are today. - Some computer standard emerges, is good enough for most needs, but leaves people bitter because it leads to yet more cultural standardization in a world already suffering from cultural globalization. I’m inherently skeptical of all change, I suppose, and my belief is we’ll just muddle along forever.
  - cratermoon 3y ago
    You could say more or less the same thing about how calendars and date/time are implemented today, as well as general language support when including bidi, CJK, and other non-roman languages. Unicode is widespread but we still have a variety of encodings, not just UTF-8.Geographical naming isn't exactly a solved problem, but localization exists. We have stuff that works, there are rough edges and plenty of places it could improve, sure. Maybe my experiences in the industry have been particularly plagued by the handling of names, sometimes so badly that I have to roll my eyes. The handling of human names just seems like a big opportunity to remove friction across international boundaries.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Names can sometimes be standardized at the worst possible times. For example, Ellis Island was a huge source of novel spellings, loss of diacritics, Anglicizations, and other rather atrocious word crimes. However, since perhaps a small, finite number of civil servants were the ones transcribing the names and putting them on official US documentation, this had the effect of basically standardizing a lot of names for families now living in these United States, and possibly reducing the variation that was found among them. While I haven't directly seen many Ellis Island records, I've seen a lot of US Census records, and it's obvious that the census workers always wrote down sort of what they heard, and when it comes to names, there could be all kinds of phonetic trickery going on. This still goes on today, and anywhere you have a bored, underpaid civil servant entering names into a rigid database system, you'll have a rather unpleasant standardization on the lowest common denominator. People who speak Arabic or Indic languages may often choose, on-the-spot, how to romanize their names. There are some romanization standards, of course, for most popular scripts, but why not follow multiple ones in the same word? I imagine that it may go the other way, as well. Whatever country people are immigrating to, whatever written language that database is implemented in, names will get standardized to that lowest-common-denominator.
  - cratermoon 3y ago
    I'm not talking about standardizing the characters. I'm talking about naming, the structure of the entire identifier people use as their names: family name, given name, clan name, nickname, patronymic, and so forth. Focusing on the characters is being stuck in the name-as-string: the exact problem I'm advocating we give up.
    - cratermoon 3y ago
      It's the difference between having only a basic typeface for Arabic and having software that can properly layout Arabic right-to-left, properly handle the variant letter forms, and generally formatting the text correctly. There's Arabic the core 28 letterforms and there's Arabic writing with proper initial, medial, and and final forms, collation, and presentation on the page.

cratermoon 3y ago

> there is no set of standards to draw upon for implementation Fair point. I used those examples mostly to acknowledge that programming has moved on from treating them as strings and integers. It's true that in the US there are few, if any, restrictions on naming. Only in 2017 did California, by law, allow names with diacriticals, as in José. However, in other countries there are interesting restrictions and patterns. Icelandic law, to give one example. > Names are effectively a collection of arbitrary Unicode values Well, yes, for just the string, but names are more than a sequence of characters. The structure of what a name is, and how it's presented, matters. for example given vs surname order, patronymic, Mongolian clan names, supported characters in CJK, and so forth. Those are things that are hard to get right, and having every organization doing i18n create its own one-off name handling code has led to chaos and a lack of interoperability internationally.

macintux 3y ago
I think there are a few possible outcomes of an attempt to standardize how computers deal with names. - Every programming language, database, etc implements something, but overall they’re not the same solution, leaving us mostly where we are today. - Some computer standard emerges, but fails because it’s not flexible enough for all the business and cultural needs, leaving us mostly where we are today. - Some computer standard emerges, is good enough for most needs, but leaves people bitter because it leads to yet more cultural standardization in a world already suffering from cultural globalization. I’m inherently skeptical of all change, I suppose, and my belief is we’ll just muddle along forever.
- cratermoon 3y ago
  You could say more or less the same thing about how calendars and date/time are implemented today, as well as general language support when including bidi, CJK, and other non-roman languages. Unicode is widespread but we still have a variety of encodings, not just UTF-8.Geographical naming isn't exactly a solved problem, but localization exists. We have stuff that works, there are rough edges and plenty of places it could improve, sure. Maybe my experiences in the industry have been particularly plagued by the handling of names, sometimes so badly that I have to roll my eyes. The handling of human names just seems like a big opportunity to remove friction across international boundaries.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
Names can sometimes be standardized at the worst possible times. For example, Ellis Island was a huge source of novel spellings, loss of diacritics, Anglicizations, and other rather atrocious word crimes. However, since perhaps a small, finite number of civil servants were the ones transcribing the names and putting them on official US documentation, this had the effect of basically standardizing a lot of names for families now living in these United States, and possibly reducing the variation that was found among them. While I haven't directly seen many Ellis Island records, I've seen a lot of US Census records, and it's obvious that the census workers always wrote down sort of what they heard, and when it comes to names, there could be all kinds of phonetic trickery going on. This still goes on today, and anywhere you have a bored, underpaid civil servant entering names into a rigid database system, you'll have a rather unpleasant standardization on the lowest common denominator. People who speak Arabic or Indic languages may often choose, on-the-spot, how to romanize their names. There are some romanization standards, of course, for most popular scripts, but why not follow multiple ones in the same word? I imagine that it may go the other way, as well. Whatever country people are immigrating to, whatever written language that database is implemented in, names will get standardized to that lowest-common-denominator.
- cratermoon 3y ago
  I'm not talking about standardizing the characters. I'm talking about naming, the structure of the entire identifier people use as their names: family name, given name, clan name, nickname, patronymic, and so forth. Focusing on the characters is being stuck in the name-as-string: the exact problem I'm advocating we give up.
  - cratermoon 3y ago
    It's the difference between having only a basic typeface for Arabic and having software that can properly layout Arabic right-to-left, properly handle the variant letter forms, and generally formatting the text correctly. There's Arabic the core 28 letterforms and there's Arabic writing with proper initial, medial, and and final forms, collation, and presentation on the page.