Re: Code Lists & Misspellings

[Joaquin Miller <miller@joaquin.net>]

< belated due to a startup issue with the list server
>

> Sue's example concerned misspellings having to
> be preserved along the
> way, even if mechanically processable country codes were available. 
> But
> her example is not just limited to misspellings: I write
> "Antwerp," but
> I thought they wrote "Antwerpen." I write "Brussels,"
> they write
> "Brussel" or "Bruxelles." Sue knows the business - do
> people really get
> bent out of shape over this? The whole point of the UN/LOCODE was 
> to
> avoid just those mix-ups by having all location information
> transmitted
> by a single code.
>
> Shades of EDI!  Now we'll have to send not only the UN/LOCODE, but
> also
> the port spelled out in any number of variants.  The UN/EDIFACT
> LOC
> segment all over again.  So what is it here we're trying to fix?

A comment:

This raises a second issue, different from the original mispelling
issue.

What is needed to get the beer to the right spot, in the face of clerks
that (quite reasonably) insist that documents match, is to transmit the
human entered text of the place name along with the code.  The code,
after all, is mainly for software.  The text, on the other hand, is
for humans.

So we ought to separate two concerns.  

1.  "avoid ... mix-ups by having ... location information
transmitted by a single code."

2.  avoid mix-ups by having critical text transmitted 

...

(Do we agree: 
--None of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Brussels, Brussel, or Bruxelles are
misspellings.
--Clerks will compare documents and may (in fact, are paid to) balk when
there are differences between the documents.
The particular problem originally raised is not about a clerk refusing to
process documents because the spelling in one document is not the
spelling of the clerk's native language.  It is about the text
on  one document not matching the text on another document.
)

...

Another benefit of transmitting text: redundancy, and the possibility for
a human to detect and even correct a coding error.  No extra
charge.

Cordially,

Joaquin

................................................

Joaquin Miller

Chief Architect

Financial Systems Architects

mailto:joaquin@acm.org

San Francisco

phone: +1 (510) 336-2545

fax:   +1 (510) 336-2546

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