4 ms·

Now that we have the standard "Haha, you don't know shit about names, and your program sucks!" pitch, where's the library/framework that developers can use that

Now that we have the standard "Haha, you don't know shit about names, and your program sucks!" pitch, where's the library/framework that developers can use that will take care of ALL these name issues? As a developer, I just want to record a person in my system, I don't want to learn about all the different cultures, character sets, name orderings, etc. that exist in this world. So, Patrick of Kalzumeus Software and other HN commenters who are disgusted that names can be truncated and whatnot, show us your respect for the culture of all Earth people and release a project that will accept any name (or no name, #40) for anyone ever without a single fault. Until then, can we agree that getting things right for 99.999% of people in your target market is good enough, and that, although unfortunate for people with culturally different names, the time and cost of getting all 40 points right would be too damn high?

superuser2 13y ago
Apparently you should use an infinite-length Unicode-compatible textarea with no validation whatsoever. I think the point is that it's wrong to think you can validate names.
a-priori 13y ago
My suggestions for dealing with names are: 1) Names are context-sensitive, so ask for a person's name by giving the context you intend to use it in. Something like, "How should we address you in an email?" or "How should we display your name to other people on the site?". 2) Do not apply any sort of transformation to a name. Don't parse it, don't truncate it, don't lowercase it. Treat it like an opaque string and use it verbatim. 3) Databases do need limits on the length of a column (unless you use a blob...) so be generous with the width of the columns. The longest recorded name is 746 letters long (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfe%2B585,_Senior http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfe%2B585,_Senior), so make sure it's longer than that. 4) I think the no-name case (#40) and the not-in-unicode case (#14) are fairly obscure, but if you want to handle them then then make names optional but require an avatar if they do not provide one. 5) Allow a person to change their name at any time.
- guerrilla 13y ago
  There is one kind of normalisation that I think would be useful though, that is to normalise whitespace. That is trim leading and trailing whitespace, convert all whitespace to space and remove multiple spaces. Otherwise, as someone with a non-trivial surname, I agree. Facebook has always driven me insane in this regard. I don't know if it's still the case, but Facebook used to have this annoying bug where they'd not only capitalise the first letter of my surname (incorrect!), they would then not allow for me to correct it because it seemed to have been treated case insensitively. They don't seem to enforce the capitalisation now since I've created a new account though. I know it was just a bug, but it was so disrespectful somehow.
grey-area 13y ago
The answer is to allow a single unicode text column for names, and don't try to validate it. That's not very hard, and is in fact easier than trying to validate or restrict names. You don't have to learn about all the different cultures etc, just don't assume they are like yours.
- stephengillie 13y ago
  What if their name uses non-unicode characters? And 2048-character limit on that field ought to be enough for everyone, right?
  - LockeWatts 13y ago
    Are there significant symbologies not contained within unicode?
    - gnuvince 13y ago
      Maybe Jimmy Page will change his legal name to Zoso? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_page#Interest_in_the_occult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_page#Interest_in_the_occu... But that's exactly the issue here; there aren't many people with names as long as Janice's, but when these people have problems with computer systems, we get to hear about it.
  - marssaxman 13y ago
    What is a "non-unicode character"? Why do you need a fixed character limit at all?
    - Kluny 13y ago
      I don't know about your first question, but the reason you need a character limit is because each time a row is added to a database, enough space is set aside to contain that row. Each row contains the same columns. For example: table Person: col1 label: name / type: text / size: 10 2 label: age / type: int / size: 3 3 label: address / type: text / size: 200 the type tells the database how to encode the data found in that column - an int takes less space than a string, so this is a space saving measure. The size refers to how many characters are allowed in that field, because that is how much space will be allocated when the row is created. If you don't need 200 characters of space, it's wasteful to allow it. But you kind of have to put a number in there, even if it's a big one. Correct me if I'm wrong, all my knowledge comes from Dr. Marla Weston's 2nd year Databases Design course.

superuser2 13y ago

Apparently you should use an infinite-length Unicode-compatible textarea with no validation whatsoever. I think the point is that it's wrong to think you can validate names.

a-priori 13y ago

My suggestions for dealing with names are: 1) Names are context-sensitive, so ask for a person's name by giving the context you intend to use it in. Something like, "How should we address you in an email?" or "How should we display your name to other people on the site?". 2) Do not apply any sort of transformation to a name. Don't parse it, don't truncate it, don't lowercase it. Treat it like an opaque string and use it verbatim. 3) Databases do need limits on the length of a column (unless you use a blob...) so be generous with the width of the columns. The longest recorded name is 746 letters long (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfe%2B585,_Senior http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfe%2B585,_Senior), so make sure it's longer than that. 4) I think the no-name case (#40) and the not-in-unicode case (#14) are fairly obscure, but if you want to handle them then then make names optional but require an avatar if they do not provide one. 5) Allow a person to change their name at any time.

guerrilla 13y ago
There is one kind of normalisation that I think would be useful though, that is to normalise whitespace. That is trim leading and trailing whitespace, convert all whitespace to space and remove multiple spaces. Otherwise, as someone with a non-trivial surname, I agree. Facebook has always driven me insane in this regard. I don't know if it's still the case, but Facebook used to have this annoying bug where they'd not only capitalise the first letter of my surname (incorrect!), they would then not allow for me to correct it because it seemed to have been treated case insensitively. They don't seem to enforce the capitalisation now since I've created a new account though. I know it was just a bug, but it was so disrespectful somehow.

grey-area 13y ago

The answer is to allow a single unicode text column for names, and don't try to validate it. That's not very hard, and is in fact easier than trying to validate or restrict names. You don't have to learn about all the different cultures etc, just don't assume they are like yours.

stephengillie 13y ago
What if their name uses non-unicode characters? And 2048-character limit on that field ought to be enough for everyone, right?
- LockeWatts 13y ago
  Are there significant symbologies not contained within unicode?
  - gnuvince 13y ago
    Maybe Jimmy Page will change his legal name to Zoso? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_page#Interest_in_the_occult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_page#Interest_in_the_occu... But that's exactly the issue here; there aren't many people with names as long as Janice's, but when these people have problems with computer systems, we get to hear about it.
- marssaxman 13y ago
  What is a "non-unicode character"? Why do you need a fixed character limit at all?
  - Kluny 13y ago
    I don't know about your first question, but the reason you need a character limit is because each time a row is added to a database, enough space is set aside to contain that row. Each row contains the same columns. For example: table Person: col1 label: name / type: text / size: 10 2 label: age / type: int / size: 3 3 label: address / type: text / size: 200 the type tells the database how to encode the data found in that column - an int takes less space than a string, so this is a space saving measure. The size refers to how many characters are allowed in that field, because that is how much space will be allocated when the row is created. If you don't need 200 characters of space, it's wasteful to allow it. But you kind of have to put a number in there, even if it's a big one. Correct me if I'm wrong, all my knowledge comes from Dr. Marla Weston's 2nd year Databases Design course.