RE: [Fwd: Re: PIM Schema ideas]

> It's pretty culturally specific to expect the [Mr] John R Smith [III]

Exactly! :-)

> it gets unclear what you should do e.g. about entering
> someone whose family name comes first in their name.

Uh ... provide an option that says how to render each name?

> my father, for example, is 'Iain Allan' but 'J.N. Allan',

Is Iain a nickname? Another valid field.

 First: J
 Middle: N
 Last: Allan
 Nick: Iain
 DisplayAs: nickname + ' ' + last

> while lots of people have more than three names

Lump them into the middle name (Mary, Katherine Elizabeth Reingold, Smith),
unless they are used as part of the surname (Aranxta, ?, Sanchez-Viccario).

The DisplayAs approach also allows things like (first + '"' + nick + '"' +
last), (last + ", " + first + middle); or other format. The resulting
string is a value like any other, which we can use to sort, search, group,
etc.

        --- Noel
Received on Thu Jun 06 2002 - 18:19:45 EDT