Re: Surnames and indexing white pages

Tim Howes <tim@terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu> Tue, 17 August 1993 16:41 UTC

Message-Id: <9308171548.AA10484@terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu>
To: john@citr.uq.oz.au
Cc: osi-ds@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Surnames and indexing white pages
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 17 Aug 1993 12:05:17 EST." <8362.9308170205@lemon>
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Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1993 11:48:13 -0400
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From: Tim Howes <tim@terminator.rs.itd.umich.edu>

> From:    john@citr.uq.oz.au
> To:      osi-ds@cs.ucl.ac.uk

> I have questions on the wisdom of making the Surname attribute
> mandatory in the Person object class, and also on the construction of white 
> pages directories in various parts of the world. I have asked the first 
> question to some people a long time ago, but never received much of a 
> response. I may be more successful this time due to the greater knowledge of 
> the X.500 directory.
> 
> The problem is that while the Person object class contains the Surname
> as a mandatory attribute, in some cultures there is no concept of a surname, 
> and therefore there will be some difficulty in getting acceptance of the
> directory by people of these cultures.

I agree with you completely.  Unfortunately, there are only various
work arounds, such as those suggested by Andrew, but no really good
solution.  As Andrew points out, making surname optional would break a
lot of stuff.                                                  -- Tim

Surnames and indexing white pages john
Re: Surnames and indexing white pages George Michaelson
Re: Surnames and indexing white pages Andrew Findlay
Re: Surnames and indexing white pages Tim Howes
Re: Surnames and indexing white pages David Herron
Re: Surnames and indexing white pages David Herron