i just don't vibe with last names why are they required
hey to all software devs out there
names should be handled as:
a free text unicode field with a generous max length and no validation.
do not require (last) names without good reason
if possible, make the purpose of the field clear when filling it in, i.e. put an example email or whatever you are actually using it for next to it.
and also, make it clear if legal names are required. make life a little easier for trans people in the process.
feel free to add to this thread.
@julialuna As someone who had to work with names quite a bit: god I'd hope it was that simple. Legal names aren't well defined so you mostly just have to guess around and hope it's right. At this point I have most of the name-related parts of Document 9303 memorized, and it's not great.
@ignaloidas yeah. in that case legal names should be handled separately imo, with free choice of display name
@ignaloidas oh no. hot take, legal names should be free text too.
@julialuna They kinda are tho... Kinda. At least in the documents with machine readable zones. But not everybody expects it to be a free text field, and that's where problems come from.
@ignaloidas they are not. in most of the world you are not free to simply chose your legal name.
@julialuna That's why I said in the documents. And if you do change your name to whatever, expect to cause chaos everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. Because almost no systems I saw are prepared for free field legal names.
@ignaloidas i know. and that's a massive issue.
@julialuna I mainly worked with legal names, but in a very automated system, where the user doesn't enter their name, we read it from their document. It's a pain. Doubly so if you are comparing it to what the user has entered.