Re: names, confusing

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• Previous message: Lynn Ten Eyck: "Re: names, confusing"

Well, if we truly were to keep it "simple" we would report names as
they were in fact used by the authors and impose no transformations
upon them.  The CIF requirement for family name first, while
understandably motivated, forces us out of the realm of simplicity.
Once we have left the realm of simplicity, what is need is a
clear, mechanical set of rules for the very un-simple transformation
required.  The information now present in the dictionary is not
sufficient to define the transformation required.  I would be
delighted if an unambigous presentation of that transformation
were to be provided in one or two simple English sentences, but
at present it looks likely to take a bit more than that if we are
to expect people to produce consistent results in writing CIFs.

If clarification is not provided in the dictionary, then it will
come the usual route -- by lots of people writing slightly different
code which results in some messed up database searches which causes
wasted time and consternation followed by email, meetings and finally
a detailed description of what was originally intended, which then
has to be put into a later version of the dictionary.  That process,
while simple and amusing, seems a poor use of resources.

• Previous message: Lynn Ten Eyck: "Re: names, confusing"