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From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?N=F3ir=EDn_Plunkett?= <noirin@apache.org>
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 10:44:00 +0200
Message-ID: <BANLkTik75TjGefr+Jm=wMeqowFx8PGYEaQ@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: LDAP custom-asf schema - family name?
To: sebb <sebbaz@gmail.com>
Cc: infrastructure-dev@apache.org, ASF Site-Dev <site-dev@apache.org>,
	Tony Stevenson <pctony@apache.org>
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On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 9:35 AM, sebb <sebbaz@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tony wrote that he is working on the custom-asf schema currently.
>
> It would be very useful for generating sorted lists of names if LDAP
> contained each person's given name and family name - or at least the
> family name and the full name.

Eeep!

I see many unspoken assumptions here that I think we need to be careful abo=
ut.

Sorting names is *hard*. Hell, even splitting names into "given" and
"family" has pitfalls, and it's certainly not always appropriate to
sort on "family name".

> Is that something that exists already, or is being considered?
>
> Also, there is a distinction between a person's full name (legal name)
> and their name as they wish it to be known publicly. These are not
> always the same.

The distinction between legal name (which may or may not actually be
the same as full name) and public name is, as far as I know, already
being accounted for in the planned schema.

> For the purposes of generating public output, of course the public
> name should always be used.

Agreed, of course :-)

> This is not always directly related to the full name, so it implies
> that the family name should either be public or there need to be
> separate versions for the full and public versions.

I think you're suggesting that output should be sorted on family name.
This is a) assuming that everyone *has* a family name, which isn't
always the case; b) inappropriate for several cultures, particularly
those where names are patronymic; c) not as straightforward as you
think even if everyone does have a family name and none of them are
patronyms.

For example, what's the correct sort order for some (actual :-) )
friends of mine?

Van Riper, Christian van den Bosch, Hugo van der Merwe, Paul Fenwick

(Yes, there's more than one correct answer.)

I think it's best to stick to "legal name" and "public name", and
simply do a string sort on public name.

N=F3ir=EDn