[Bug localedata/14641] Deprecate name_fmt

["keld at keldix dot com" <sourceware-bugzilla@sourceware.org>]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14641

--- Comment #29 from keld at keldix dot com <keld at keldix dot com> ---
On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 09:19:57PM +0000, bugdal at aerifal dot cx wrote:
> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=14641
> 
> --- Comment #28 from Rich Felker <bugdal at aerifal dot cx> ---
> > One could actually introduce a new keyword for women unmarried+married.
> > This is a convention found in many cultures.
> 
> This would be a very bad change from my perspective. The entire aim of the
> locale system should be avoiding offending users by presenting information in a
> way that's culturally inappropriate. While in many cultures there is such a
> historical distinction in titles, it's generally not necessary to use such
> titles at all, and there will be a segment of members of the given culture who
> are offended by it, consider it backwards, misogynist, etc. like Florian
> mentioned. The locale system should not be reinforcing or giving preference to
> conservative elements of the cultures it's modelling. It should be neutral and
> acceptable to as diverse a group of people within the culture as possible.
> 
> On a related issue, even storing people's gender or sex in your data is a bad
> idea unless it's absolutely essential. What do you do when the person's gender
> is ambiguous (particularly a problem in information systems where an employee,
> rather than the person being identified, enters their information into the
> system), or when the gender on their legal documents does not match the gender
> they identify as? Many systems nowadays seem to ask users to choose their title
> rather than asking them for gender, which seems like a thinly-veiled way of
> asking for gender, but even that has problems. For example you risk non-native
> speakers of the language not understanding what title means or what the choices
> are, then getting offended later when they're called by a gender-inappropriate
> title they (accidentally) selected.
> 
> Anyway perhaps this is all tangential, but my point is that the locale system
> should be deprecating all of these things rather than reinforcing them.

Well, my take is that we are not political with the locales. We just record
what cultural things that are in use. Then we leave it to implementers
and users to do what they want to do, in a way that is culturally acceptable.

I myself do not use titles normally in my work, for example in my ISO
work, but many of my collegues do. I then provide for their use, and
allow them to do what is natural to them. I also recognize that in a culture,
there may be several levels of politeness. An invitation to a formal
anniversary, or a legal letter may have other levels of politeness than a SMS:

In some way the locales are conservative, preserving the different cultures
of the world in the digital society. In some other way the locales are
liberating, allowing a culturally acceptable appearance of applications in
most of the cultures of the world. At least the locales should enable us to 
get rid of English oriented conventions, which are not acceptable in may
cultures of the world.

Best regards
Keld

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