The whole call name discussion occurring on gramps-users is starting to
frustrate me. From my perspective, this means either we come up with a
good generic solution, or we get no solution at all.
So far, it seems the comments all tend to boil down to "My problem needs
to be addressed perfectly, and everyone else's problem can be handled by
a hack". Sorry, but this does not work for me. If we go down that path,
we end up with 3000 individual hacks, and a 15 day training course will
be needed to learn how to use the program.
So, I will state the issues that we know, and I will propose a solution.
This solution may not be perfect for every situation, but hopefully
should address the issues without causing an undo burden on anyone.
The issues:
1) In some areas of the world, (including Germany and other areas),
there is the concept of a Rufname (translated to English as a call
name), which is what the person is commonly called. This Rufname
should be underlined in reports. The Rufname is a legal entity, and
is one of the names in a person's given name. So for "Hans Peter",
the rufname may be either "Hans" or "Peter", and that name should be
underlined in reports.
2) In some areas, the concept of a Rufname exists, but with a slightly
different definition. In this case, a subset of a name may be
considered a Rufname. The example give was "Richardus" with the
Rufname of "Richard". It is not clear if this should be underlined.
3) Other areas have the equivalent of a "call name", which is what a
person is commonly called. This name does not necessarily have a
legal status, but is not really viewed as a nickname, and may not be
one of the given names or a subset of the given name. An example of
this would be the given name of "William" with the call name of
"Bill". In this case, the person may frequently appear in documents
with the name of "Bill", not "William". While some may view this a
nickname, it is treated differently. In newspapers and other
documents, a nickname is usually in quotes.
Example: Peter Edward Rose has a call name of Pete, but the
nickname of "Charlie Hustle". You will almost *never* find any
reference in general documents referring to Peter Edward Rose.
Virtually every reference will call him Pete Rose. In fact,
Google is smart enough to also return results for Pete Rose if you
request information on Peter Rose.
(Yes, I grew up as a fan of the Big Red Machine in the 70's)
Proposed solution(s):
I'm starting to view this as two separate issues. The first is an
underlining issue, and the other is a "Commonly called" name issue. And
I believe that as long as we try to treat these as the same issue, we
will fail to arrive at a solution.
So, to address the underlining solution:
1) Mark up characters will be added to given name entry field that will
allow you to delimit the section of a name that should be underlined.
The '<' and '>' characters will be used to indicate the start and
stop of underlining. So, if "Hans Peter" should have "Peter"
underlined, then it should be entered as "Hans <Peter>". The display
routines will be enhanced to handled this, remvoing the mark up
characters and replacing with underlining. Possibly in the future, we
can replace this with a more visual indicator, such as true
underlining in the entry field, based on the limitations of GTK.
To address the Commonly Called issue:
1) The nickname field will disappear. The current method of handling
nicknames is flawed anyway, since a nickname appears to be related
to a name, but internally is not. Also, there is a limit to a single
nickname. The nickname field will be replaced with an Attribute
called "NickName". You may add as many nicknames to a person as you
like.
2) Each Name will allow for a "Commonly Called" field. This will allow
you to add a name that a person is commonly called, that may not be
part of the formal given name. There will be one Commonly Called
field for each Name. Reports may choose to use any combination of
the formal name (such as "Donald Norman Allingham") or the common
name ("Don Allingham").
Comments are welcome.
--
Don Allingham <
[hidden email]>
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