Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 380.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
[1] From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?M=EDche=E1l?= Mac an Airchinnigh (37)
<mmaa@eircom.net> (by
Subject: Re: 17.377 anti-Irish computing?
[2] From: Thierry van Steenberghe <tvs@idp-co.be> (14)
Subject: Re: 17.377 anti-Irish computing?
[3] From: Anne Mahoney <amahoney@perseus.tufts.edu> (15)
Subject: Re: 17.377 anti-Irish computing?
[4] From: sarneil <sarneil@uvic.ca> (21)
Subject: RE: 17.377 anti-Irish computing?
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 06:41:32 +0000
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?M=EDche=E1l?= Mac an Airchinnigh
<mmaa@eircom.net> (by
Subject: Re: 17.377 anti-Irish computing?
On Monday, November 3, 2003, at 07:00 AM, Humanist Discussion Group (by way
of Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>) wrote:
>Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 377.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
> www.princeton.edu/humanist/
> Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
>
>
>
> Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 06:49:38 +0000
> From: Office of The Provost <provost@georgetown.edu>
> >
>
>Willard,
>
>For many years, I have observed that some computer systems have difficulty
>with apostrophes in surnames -- a common problem among Irish and
>Irish-decended folk. Just now, trying to sign up for online billing from
>a phone company, it couldn't recognize me until I deleted the apostrophe.
>
>1. Any useful algorithm to understand when/how this will happen?
--- The problem lies in reliance upon algorithms that date from the age of ASCII. Not only do you have the problem of O'Donnell but also of Ó Dónaill :) Other ancient legacies are spaces in names: O Donell. >2. Any prospects of remediation? --- Yes! Encourage universal movement to unicode.>Jim O'Donnell >Georgetown University
Mícheál
PS: I wonder what my name looks like to the recipients of this posting? :)
... o O o O o ... [ , HO ] ... o O o O o ... ... o Mícheál Mac an Airchinnigh o ... ... o O o O o ... [ , HO ] ... o O o O o ...
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 06:42:24 +0000 From: Thierry van Steenberghe <tvs@idp-co.be> Subject: Re: 17.377 anti-Irish computing?
The good news (well, sort of...) is that machines are not just anti-Irish: apostrophes also appear in family names in several other languages: French (like d'Artagnan, for example...), Italian, Dutch... The bad news is that problems also occur with other 'unexpected' characters: diacritics, dashes, or even spaces, like in my (Dutch sounding) name, for example. Often the uncarefully designed web forms just take the first 'word'... (or even not, when it's written with a minuscule).
Computing is indeed still heavily 'marked' by its history...
-- __________________________________
Thierry van Steenberghe Bruxelles / Belgium e-mail: tvs@idp-co.be __________________________________
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 06:42:55 +0000 From: Anne Mahoney <amahoney@perseus.tufts.edu> Subject: Re: 17.377 anti-Irish computing?
Fellow Irishman JOD wonders:
> For many years, I have observed that some computer systems have difficulty > with apostrophes in surnames -- a common problem among Irish and > Irish-decended folk. Just now, trying to sign up for online billing from > a phone company, it couldn't recognize me until I deleted the apostrophe. > > 1. Any useful algorithm to understand when/how this will happen? > 2. Any prospects of remediation?
One might try the Irish spelling: two words, the first being a long O with a fada (= acute accent) -- so, Ó Donnell. I assume that a company has to deal with a space for names like "du Lac" or "van der Meer," and it really *should* be able to deal with accents in names like "Martínez."
--Anne Mahoney (or Anne Ní Gearoid, as gaeilge) Tufts University
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2003 06:43:30 +0000 From: sarneil <sarneil@uvic.ca> Subject: RE: 17.377 anti-Irish computing?
Hi Jim
If I remember correctly, in certain data encoding systems the apostrophe character is also used as an explicit delimiter around strings of text (i.e. a quotation mark) and for that reason the character was not allowed inside a quoted string. There's no way to predict what will and won't support the character as it depends on the programming environment and character encoding conventions of the host computer. The only characters which will definitely work are the upper and lower case English alphabet, the digits, the underscore and the dash.
The unicode standard for character encoding distinguishes these two characters, but it might be a while before all the bits and pieces on the internet (and database systems may well be one of the last technologies to upgrade) support that character encoding system, and of course if the author includes the single quote mark where she or he meant the apostrophe, you'll have the same problem.
The Unicode system will solve virtually all similar problems for people with accented characters in their names, not to mention names in Chinese, Arabic etc.
Stewart Arneil University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre Half-Baked Software Inc.
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