Re: a new script category: Scientific

On Sunday, May 25, 2003, at 10:57  PM, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:

> I now took a closer look and I must apologize, your module is not that
> English-specific.

Oh, whew!

> But the 'first, middle, last, extras' is a bit difficult.
> That is somehow...  errr, "culturally Western European", probably.
> The good/bad news is that I haven't ever seen a comprehensive solution
> or terminology that would solve this.  Some examples that come to mind:
>
> 	family_name given_name [Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian]
>
> 	given_name patronymic (male) [Icelandic, some Indic] [2]
> 	given_name matronymic (female)
>
> 	several levels of patronymics [Arabic]
>
> 	given_name (Tamil)
>
> [1] At least you didn't go by "ChristianName Surname".
> [2] 'Gurusamy Sarathy' being one example.

Well, I admit that the terms are Amero-centric, and they suggest an 
order, as well. But the format placeholders are simple strings (%f, %m, 
%l, etc.), and to a certain extent, they can be considered arbitrary. I 
wouldn't want to change those, but would have no objection to changing 
what they're called in the docs, provided some more or less universally 
neutral terms could be put forward.

Maybe I should just go through my anthropology texts and look for 
kinship terminology used in that discipline...

At any rate, even if the docs change, I don't think that the interface 
would change in the slightest.

Regards,

David

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