Re: [Refdb-users] The case against <middlename>

[Markus H. <mar...@mh...>]

Bruce D'Arcus writes:
 > 
 > First, a suggestion Markus: can you change the reply-to behavior to 
 > point to the list?
 > 

mailman allows to do this, but as Marc has pointed out, this behaviour
is not without problems. I personally hit reply-to-all and remove the
poster's address manually. This isn't elegant but you get used to it.

 > Let's consider examples:
 > 
 > James C. Scott
 > 
 > So we could have:
 > 
 > 1)
 > 
 > <first>James</first>
 > <middle>C.</middle>
 > <last>Scott</last>
 > 
 > 2)
 > 
 > <first>James</first>
 > <middle>C</middle>
 > <last>Scott</last>
 > 
 > 3)
 > 
 > <first>James C.</first>
 > <last>Scott</last>
 > 
 > 4)
 > 
 > <given>James C.</given>
 > <family>Scott</family>
 > 
 > 5)
 > 
 > <given>James</given>
 > <given>C.</given>
 > <family>Scott</family>
 > 
 > I find all of them problematic, frankly, because we don't have a way to 
 > know whether a name is initialized or not.  But I wonder if 5 wouldn't 
 > be a solution.  I personally would code it as 4 and expect the software 
 > and to figure out how to format it on output.
 > 

From my point of view 1, 2, and 5 would work. The latter will also be
the only way to deal with names in MODS, although it does allow to put
just about everything into one <given> element. My argument against 4
is that a stupid piece of software should not have to do much
guesswork as it will inevitably fail in some cases. Separating the
names instead of hoping that the users will enter them in a useful way
results in cleaner data.

regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Hoenicka
mar...@ca...
(Spam-protected email: replace the quadrupeds with "mhoenicka")
http://www.mhoenicka.de