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When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

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Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#61
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a web developer but whenever this kind of thing happens I just wonder why there isn't a single standard library in every common web language to deal with this and if there is, why it's not being used more often.

Do you really need a library for that? Why can't you leave the name as it was entered by the user, without making further assumptions?

[deleted]

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#62
post #22

> He immediately gets angry at Facebook messing up his name. The company changes his name to ‘Hans De Zwart’, with a capitalized D. A small annoyance, but for De Zwart it signifies something bigger: “It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.” This reminds me of the excellent "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Name…

> which is especially ironic as you are usually explicitly requested to provide the name as stated in the passport.

Mine either doesn't go through, or goes through and is silently trimmed down to whatever amount of chars they support.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#63
post #5

Looking at > He immediately gets angry at Facebook messing up his name. The company changes his name to ‘Hans De Zwart’, with a capitalized D. A small annoyance, but for De Zwart it signifies something bigger: “It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.” I am really confused. I am assuming the correct spelling is "de…

It was actually translated into English by De Zwart himself. I believe that proper capitalisation of Dutch names with 'de' is to keep the 'd' lowercase if stating the full name (Hans de Zwart), but to capitalise the 'd' if stating just the last name (De Zwart), which the article seems to do consistently (except when quoting Facebook's mangling of the name).

Works like that in French -- with subtle caveats depending on the length of the name and weather it starts with a vowel: "D'Alembert", "De Sèze", "De Gaulle"... but "La Rochefoucauld".

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#64
post #22

> He immediately gets angry at Facebook messing up his name. The company changes his name to ‘Hans De Zwart’, with a capitalized D. A small annoyance, but for De Zwart it signifies something bigger: “It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.” This reminds me of the excellent "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Name…

There are actually a whole series of algorithms used to help match the name on your passport with the name in the airline reservation system, due to absolute mayhem when dealing with asian names for example

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#65
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always worry with plane tickets because I have a middle name on my passport but many buying services don't take middle names into account. Also the name of my town has a "Ą" letter in it, which also is problematic in online forms and I often just write A instead just to be on the safe side.

By definition there is no legal middle names here in Finland (all of the 1 to 4 names given to you are called "first name" in the law). And thus all of your names will be in the passport too. Filling some foreign (or poorly done/ported local) it system forms can be bit of a guess work. Also as a bonus space " " is a legal character in a name. Both "Jukka Pekka" and "Jukka-Pekka" are valid names (also you could have 2…

> "Jukka Pekka" [...] also you could have 2 names "Jukka" and "Pekka"

How is that distinguished in legal documents/while registering the name/...?

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#67
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the same impression, until I reached the end of the article and noticed first the return to "de", and second that the author is de Zwart himself

If you're referring to him by his last name, it'd be De Zwart. If you're referring to him by his full name, it'd be Hans de Zwart.

And I made a presumptuous comment in another thread about the irony of the author getting it wrong.

Whether that’s you or not, I apologise.

I shall leave my shame there, as a reminder to myself.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#68
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically for that example, Zoom is written and maintained in China, so I would expect the developers made special code for segmenting chinese names but not non-English latin ones.

Are these characters strictly speaking "Latin"? Would they be categorised as "Nordic" or "Cyrillic"? Standard "Latin" characters to me are those that are supported on a Latin keyboard, and provided for by the latin codepage.

They are all Latin according to Unicode 1.0

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_script_in_Unicode

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#69
post #27
post #5

Looking at > He immediately gets angry at Facebook messing up his name. The company changes his name to ‘Hans De Zwart’, with a capitalized D. A small annoyance, but for De Zwart it signifies something bigger: “It is the arrogance of a giant American corporation which considers the correct spelling of the names of millions of Dutch people an edge case.” I am really confused. I am assuming the correct spelling is "de…

I am assuming the correct spelling is "de Zwart" Are you really willing to assume someone spelled their own name wrong before you question your own knowledge about Dutch names? That seems a bit unreasonable. It's much more likely that your assumption is incorrect than someone wrote their name incorrectly. This is the premise that should drive software as far as user input goes. The rule should simply be "Trust that t…

Are you chiding someone for knowing and communicating their confusion and assumptions? When someone is already communicating enough self-awareness to obviate that, either contribute clarifying information or say nothing.

Re: When thebiglebow.ski is blocked by Facebook

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need a library. Name is an open input field. As long as the inputs are sanitized, you should just accept whatever is typed there.

Depends on the language and what you'll use the name for. Some names change capitalisation when the last name is used by itself vs full name for example. In some languages a name affect the words around it in a sentence (for a random example, an "o" in Spanish (or) becomes "u" when the next word starts by the "o" sound -> "Carlos o Maria", but "Carlos u Oscar". In general, for a sufficiently large and well-localised…

I agree with you, however these are small issues compared to having arbitrary requirements for names which create real life problems.
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