Subject: [VCARDDAV] phonetic-given-name and phonetic-family-name

From: Tantek Çelik <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:40:30 -0700

Greetings,

In iOS and MacOS Address Book interfaces, in addition to the usual
name fields such as given-name, family-name, the Address Book provides
phonetic-given-name and phonetic-family-name fields for users to enter
for a contact.

The UI use case of these is sorting by given or family name
explicitly, beyond a simple "canonical" sort which the 'sort-as'
parameter would suffice.

The options of sort by given name (first name) or sort by family name
(last name) are provided which sort according to phonetic-given-name
if any otherwise given-name, and phonetic-family-name if any otherwise
family-name, respectively. This feature is apparently particularly
useful in Japanese.

phonetic-given-name and phonetic-family-name could be added as
sub-components of the 'n' property similar to given-name and
family-name, or they could be made their own properties as well,
similar to nickname.

What do others think?

Should these properties/components be proposed as a vCard4 extension?

I'm asking as we (Mozilla) are considering adding these name
components to satisfy the above use-cases, to the ContactsAPI[1] which
I'm editing and doing my best to directly base on vCard4/hCard.

Any preferences as to the details?

Thanks,

Tantek

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI/ContactsAPI

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:22:21 -0400

> explicitly, beyond a simple "canonical" sort which the 'sort-as'

Here's where you're losing me.  We had talked about properties like
"soundex", or some other sort of phonetic-name thing.  But the idea
was never to *sort* on these things -- they'd be for human
consumption, or perhaps for a speech synthesizer.  If one's name were
"Hélène", for instance, why on *Earth* would one want to *sort* that
under something other than "H"?

> family-name, respectively. This feature is apparently particularly

I can't parse this, and I don't understand what you're trying to get
at.  But in general, I get the idea that users of non-English scripts,
such as Japanese or Chinese, would want to have a way to sort the
names along with similar-sounding English names.  But that's already
handled with the sort-as stuff.

To be clear: I think some sort of "this is how the name is pronounced"
fields are useful, and I'd support developing an extension for that.
I just don't see how it has anything to do with sorting.

Barry

---

From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:16:26 -0400

> family-name, respectively. This feature is apparently particularly

Yes. We have received input from at least one native Japanese speaker 
while editing vCard 4. [1] It resulted in the removal of the SORT-STRING 
property that was in vCard 3 and the addition of the SORT-AS parameter. 
SORT-AS also now takes a *list* of values.

I think what we have in vCard 4 now allows this use case. Basically you 
would do it like this:

N;SORT-AS="phonetic-family-name,phonetic-given-name":family-name;given-name;;

Would that work for you?

Simon

[1] Point 3) in 
<http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vcarddav/current/msg01520.html> 
started the thread.
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