[OSM-talk] Announcing name searches for OSM

[Lars Aronsson]

David Earl wrote:

> The first and last are already there. I have Ø as O at present 
> (some Danish colleagues had in the past described Ø to me as an 
> entirely separate letter that didn't have a direct equivalent, 
> but from what you say, they were wrong),

Ø is a separate letter in the Danish alphabet, sorted after Z 
(ABC...XYZÆØÅ).  However, if a Danish placename is Ørefløde, a 
person with an English keyboard will try to search for Oreflode or 
perhaps Oerefloede and will be disappointed if the right placename 
is not found.  It is not the search function's task to teach 
foreigners about the Danish alphabet or punish those who don't 
know, but to deliver useful search results.

It might be useful to consider any double wovel or any wovel 
followed by 'e' or any accented/decorated wovel to be equivalent 
to the first wovel without accents, e.g. a = aa = ae = æ = ä = å.  
This will lead to some false hits (ä = å, Habo = Håbo), but that's 
less of a problem.  Similarly, if the same rule is applied to 
consonants, you will have that Hannover (German spelling) = 
Hanover (English spelling) and Gdańsk = Gdansk.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se