RE: [Fwd: Re: PIM Schema ideas]

On Thu, 2002-06-06 at 18:57, Moray Allan wrote:
> I'd actually warn against splitting up the name fields too much.
>
> It's pretty culturally specific to expect the [Mr] John R Smith [III]
> format, and it gets unclear what you should do e.g. about entering
> someone whose family name comes first in their name....

I don't really understand what you're suggesting here.

It seems fairly clear that the name is going to have to be broken up
into at least a few component parts, just so that you can present the
contacts in the traditional "sorted alphabetically by family name"
format. You're right that there are cultural differences that make this
slightly more complicated, and there probably needs to be both a simple
and an advanced UI to handle this.

All this seems to point towards the need to split up the name at the
point of entry, and store all the fields separately in the database (or
within a single string in vCard format, which is essentially the same
thing).

> Even staying within the narrower range, my father, for example, is 'Iain
> Allan' but 'J.N. Allan', while lots of people have more than three
> names, or primarily use something other than their first names.

The easy way to deal with that is to have a single "given names" field,
and let people like your father enter either "Iain" or "J.N." depending
on how they want to style themselves at that instant. Similarly, eople
like J. Random Hacker who go by something other than their first names
can just enter "J. Random" or whatever.

p.
Received on Thu Jun 06 18:11:26 2002