This reminds me of the more extreme case of Spain changing the treatment of due to limitations of PCs in the 1990s.
Our tools should adapt to the needs of humans, not the other way around!
North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
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Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
#92As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". https://www.agi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BS7666Guid... # Standard data types used in BS 7666 CharacterString: a sequence of alphanumeric characters ... If I had to guess, alphanumeric is interpreted as [0-9a-z]. The s…
BS in "BS 7666" stands for British Standard and not anything else.
If the standard restricts street names to those certain characters, may be it really is BS.
Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
#93This reminds me of the more extreme case of Spain changing the treatment of due to limitations of PCs in the 1990s. Our tools should adapt to the needs of humans, not the other way around!
Do you have pointers to this? As a Spaniard I recall that even though I was originally told the spanish alphabet treated the LL as its own letter, it always felt quite inconsistent. And I always assumed it’s removal was more about simplifying things than having to do with computers
Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
#94This reminds me of the more extreme case of Spain changing the treatment of due to limitations of PCs in the 1990s. Our tools should adapt to the needs of humans, not the other way around!
The other day (in 2024!!) , I got a message saying my password needed to include a special character, with a helpful list of special characters that were forbidden.
Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
#95You can print apostrophes on a street sign without any database issues because a street sign doesn't interface directly with a database. At least not yet... All the technical issues here have already been solved a hundred times, there's plenty of other options. It's a little worrying that we're eliminating punctuation in real life because of issues with integrating with geographical databases.
Apparently, this is because of a standard they're required to conform to, not database software in specific: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929 > As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". On the other hand, you’re naïve if you think English hasn’t already b…
The Linotype machine supported fl, ff, ffi, ℔, œ, and æ. See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Linotype... linked to from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine. Or see https://archive.org/details/LinotypeKeyboardPractice/page/n9... .
Even cheap printing presses could handle more than you think. Here's a type case layout from 1846, again with æ, œ, fl, ff, and ffi, fi and ffl. https://archive.org/details/printingapparatu00holtrich/page/... .
That book is for the "Parlour printing press [which] was invented by Mr. Cowper for the amusement and education of youth, by enabling them to print any little subject they had previously written, provided the printing did not exceed in size the dimensions of an ordinary duodecimo page, which measures about 5 inches by 3 inches."
Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't the government fund a single open standard? Every council is now individually paying to license this broken spec.
You can make that suggestion at https://github.com/co-cddo/open-standards That's the UK Government's discussion space for adopting open standards. (I used to work there.)
Thanks, I will do!
I'm a big fan of the UK government's commitments to open standards and their whole IT philosophy in general.
That said local councils usually give me quite the opposite feeling. I will definitely look into your suggestion in the hope of seeing some trickle-down!
Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
#97Alternative solution: put the e back in that the apostrophe is standing in place of. St Maryes Place
Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
#98This reminds me of the more extreme case of Spain changing the treatment of due to limitations of PCs in the 1990s. Our tools should adapt to the needs of humans, not the other way around!
Hmm... However, language is itself also a tool. There are cases where adapting language to another tool is easier than the other way around.
Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
#99As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". https://www.agi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/BS7666Guid... # Standard data types used in BS 7666 CharacterString: a sequence of alphanumeric characters ... If I had to guess, alphanumeric is interpreted as [0-9a-z]. The s…
Such a strict interpretation would also exclude spaces.
Re: North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
#100You can print apostrophes on a street sign without any database issues because a street sign doesn't interface directly with a database. At least not yet... All the technical issues here have already been solved a hundred times, there's plenty of other options. It's a little worrying that we're eliminating punctuation in real life because of issues with integrating with geographical databases.
Apparently, this is because of a standard they're required to conform to, not database software in specific: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40265929 > As far as I can tell, this isn't an issue with the specific database itself, but the standard they are required to record geographic data in, which the end of the article mentions as "BS 7666". On the other hand, you’re naïve if you think English hasn’t already b…
With the printing press it makes sense, there's physical constraints that make things very difficult if you want to support a huge number of different characters. Those limitations don't exist anymore though.
On one hand we have systems supporting Unicode and just about every character imaginable, it's an example of using technology to go beyond the limitations of the past. You could have a system that supports emojis on street signs, but instead we're going the opposite direction and introducing artificial limitations that are even more restrictive than 500 year-old technology.