https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38009963 2023, 467 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28986735 at the time in 2021, 267 comments
It seems reasonable to limit compliance to some specific character set. Which character set should it be? Just one that can accurately encode all "official" languages in the region?
Why? How do you come to this conclusion?
Think of it as though Unicode decided that the letter "m" wasn't needed to write English text, since you can just write "rn" and it'll be close enough. Someone named "James" might want to have their name spelled correctly instead of "Jarnes", but that wouldn't be possible. Han unification did essentially this.
Prove me wrong with a counter-example.
First search result.
Both character fall into the first category I mentioned, no variants.
Note that GP claimed "not representable" (not "not represented"). Based on what I know, that claim feels quite wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_law
Furthermore there is a standardized subset of Unicode codepoints which is intended to encompass all the legal names in Europe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_91379
> normative subset of Unicode Latin characters, sequences of base characters and diacritic signs, and special characters for use in names of persons, legal entities, products, addresses etc
(the name was a unique symbol)
Yes, all abstractions leak, there will always be edge cases. Doesn't mean "JUST USE ASCII DUH" (the lowercase extension is for the wimps); a whole spectrum exists between these extremes.
It isn't perfect, and there's always a way to subvert good faith if you want to make a point or just be an asshole. The Unicode Consortium is working on the first, and the second can be handled by the majestic indifference of bureaucracy.
Furthermore, this happened in Belgium, a country with at least three official languages and with enough friction between different groups that there is a legal requirement for law enforcement to talk to you in your own language (i.e. Dutch in the Francophone area and French in the Dutch-speaking area).
Also, I think GDPRhub has the most apt take of the whole situation:
> A correctly functioning banking institution may be expected to have computing systems that meet current standards, including the right to correct spelling of people's names.
Honestly, it's ridiculous that a bank can even operate a country without being able to store common names. The banking system isn't from the 70s either, it was deployed in the mid nineties, two years after UTF-8 came out, and six years after UCS-2 came out.
If I start a bank in the UK and I my system can't render the letter "f", I expect someone to speak up and declare how ridiculous that is. This is no different.
I wonder how many British banks can support a name like Llŷr, which has several notable living people:
If anyone is interested, that's UTF-EBCDIC [1]. In reality even IBM itself didn't use that encoding though.
It's nothing to do with that. It's the decades of work by the Unicode Consortium that makes this possible.
Which (I happen to think) is a very good idea.
EBCDIC can be pronounced as ebb-sid-ick in conversation
thyristan•1d ago
The machine-readable parts of government issued passports also do not adhere to that ruling, as do many government IT systems in Europe. The fallout from that ruling has been underwhelming so far.
JdeBP•1d ago
cjs_ac•1d ago
pepa65•2h ago