re: READ Apostrophe in Your Name? You Can't Fly!

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Rodney Van Meter <rdv () sfc wide ad jp>
> Date: November 27, 2009 5:30:33 PM EST
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Re: [IP] READ  Apostrophe in Your Name? You Can't Fly!

> Try living in a country where the Roman alphabet isn't the standard  
> encoding, with a last name with a space in it, and with a suffix  
> such a "Junior" or "III".
>
> My name has been "alphabetized" under V (which is how we usually do  
> it in the U.S.), M, and I (for "III").  It has also be alphabetized  
> under R, B (for "Ban"), and "Mi" (for "Miitaa") instead of "Me", as  
> it gets katakana-ized and moves back and forth between  
> representations.
>
> Many databases both in the U.S. and here still handle last names  
> with spaces poorly or not at all.  Many here have limitations on  
> name length that are unreasonably short by American standards, let  
> alone eastern European, Middle Eastern, Latin American, or Indian.   
> When we were buying our house we went round and round with the (new)  
> bank about getting my name onto an account, and then onto a bank  
> card (the first showed up as "Rodney Meter").  Appealing to the  
> passport ultimately worked, but now I have to use the full  
> cumbersome thing on a bunch of things where I'd rather just use  
> "Rodney Van Meter" (side note: Mac's Mail app tells me that "Rodney"  
> is a misspelled word).
>
> Not to mention the problems of the multiplicity of systems for  
> romanizing non-alphabetic names.
>
> Separate anecdote: one of the classes I teach is "Network  
> Programming in C".  The TAs and I occasionally have to explain to  
> students that, despite what one would hope, all white space is  
> equal, but some white space is more equal than others:  gcc barfs  
> all over non-ASCII Japanese white space.  And *finding* the place  
> where a double-width space character got inserted is difficult for  
> students who are using any editor other than Word for the first  
> time, and who have no idea what ASCII, JIS, EUC, etc. are.
>
> (Getting all the way from not knowing how to create a plain ASCII  
> text file to sockets is a lot in one semester for a lightly-united  
> class, but that's another story.)
>
>        --Rod



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com