3 ms·

What would be wrong with "enter your name as it appears in the machine-readable zone of your passport" (or "would appear" for people who have never gotten one)?

What would be wrong with "enter your name as it appears in the machine-readable zone of your passport" (or "would appear" for people who have never gotten one)? Isn't that the one standard format for names that actually is universal?

ahoka 2y ago
I would like to use my name as my parents gave it to me, thanks. Is that too much to ask for?
- account42 2y ago
  If your parents were smartasses, then yes.
- richardwhiuk 2y ago
  How much flexibility are we giving parents in what they name children? If a parent invented a totally new glyph, would supporting that be a requirement?
  - Muromec 2y ago
    Luckily, there is a vital records keeping office which already bothered to check with the law on that matter and if they can write it, so can you.
ks2048 2y ago
There's the problem that "appears" is a visible phenomenon and unicode strings can contain non-visible characters and multiple ways to represent the same visible information. Normalization is supposed to help here, but some sites may fail to do this or do incorrectly, etc.
- josephcsible 2y ago
  But the MRZ of a passport doesn't contain any of those problem characters.
  - ks2048 2y ago
    But on some random website, with people copy-pasting from who-knows-what, they will have to normalize or validate, etc. to deal with such characters.
    - josephcsible 2y ago
      The point is if the standard were to enter it like in the MRZ, it would be easy to validate.
crooked-v 2y ago
From experience, it's not actually universal. Visa applications will often ask for name information not encoded in the MRZ.
Muromec 2y ago
The problem is, people exists that have É in their name and will go to court when you spell it as E, the court will also say that 1 ) you have the technical ability to write it as É and 2) they have a right to have their name spelled correctly. Also it's not nice and bad for business to be like this.
- josephcsible 2y ago
  > they have a right to have their name spelled correctly IMO, having the law consider this as an unconditional right is the root of the problem. What happens when people start making up their own characters that aren't in Unicode to put in their names? > Also it's not nice and bad for business to be like this. What about having a validated "legal name" for everything official and an unvalidated "display name" that's only ever parroted back to the person who entered it?
  - Muromec 2y ago
    > What happens when people start making up their own characters that aren't in Unicode to put in their names? They first have to fight the Unicode committee and maybe they actually have a point and the character is made up in a way that is acceptable in a society. Then they will fight their local authorities who run everything on 30 years old system. Only after they become your problem, at which point you fix your cursed regexp. >an unvalidated "display name" that's only ever parroted back to the person who entered it? You will do that wrong too. When you send me an email, I would expect my name to be in different form compared to what you display in the active user widget. The point is, you need to know the exact context in which the name is used and also communicate it to me so I can tell you the right thing to display.

ahoka 2y ago

I would like to use my name as my parents gave it to me, thanks. Is that too much to ask for?

account42 2y ago
If your parents were smartasses, then yes.
richardwhiuk 2y ago
How much flexibility are we giving parents in what they name children? If a parent invented a totally new glyph, would supporting that be a requirement?
- Muromec 2y ago
  Luckily, there is a vital records keeping office which already bothered to check with the law on that matter and if they can write it, so can you.

ks2048 2y ago

There's the problem that "appears" is a visible phenomenon and unicode strings can contain non-visible characters and multiple ways to represent the same visible information. Normalization is supposed to help here, but some sites may fail to do this or do incorrectly, etc.

josephcsible 2y ago
But the MRZ of a passport doesn't contain any of those problem characters.
- ks2048 2y ago
  But on some random website, with people copy-pasting from who-knows-what, they will have to normalize or validate, etc. to deal with such characters.
  - josephcsible 2y ago
    The point is if the standard were to enter it like in the MRZ, it would be easy to validate.

crooked-v 2y ago

From experience, it's not actually universal. Visa applications will often ask for name information not encoded in the MRZ.

Muromec 2y ago

The problem is, people exists that have É in their name and will go to court when you spell it as E, the court will also say that 1 ) you have the technical ability to write it as É and 2) they have a right to have their name spelled correctly. Also it's not nice and bad for business to be like this.

josephcsible 2y ago
> they have a right to have their name spelled correctly IMO, having the law consider this as an unconditional right is the root of the problem. What happens when people start making up their own characters that aren't in Unicode to put in their names? > Also it's not nice and bad for business to be like this. What about having a validated "legal name" for everything official and an unvalidated "display name" that's only ever parroted back to the person who entered it?
- Muromec 2y ago
  > What happens when people start making up their own characters that aren't in Unicode to put in their names? They first have to fight the Unicode committee and maybe they actually have a point and the character is made up in a way that is acceptable in a society. Then they will fight their local authorities who run everything on 30 years old system. Only after they become your problem, at which point you fix your cursed regexp. >an unvalidated "display name" that's only ever parroted back to the person who entered it? You will do that wrong too. When you send me an email, I would expect my name to be in different form compared to what you display in the active user widget. The point is, you need to know the exact context in which the name is used and also communicate it to me so I can tell you the right thing to display.