Touchstones for "Mapping"

[Lisa Dusseault]

I heard a few principles in IDNABIS this week that I'd like to  
identify.  They all relate to "Mapping", or "input assistance", but at  
any rate we're talking about pre-lookup logic.

1.  Canonical forms:  encourage labels to be stored and displayed,  
whenever possible, in a canonical form.  The protocol only uses the  
canonical form.

2. Conservatism: in no cases map something valid to something else  
valid!

3.  Consistency of conversion: encourage software to apply the same  
global conversions (aka mappings) if they feel it necessary to help  
users get from an invalid input to a ULabel. Some implementors will,  
however, choose to use alternate mappings no matter what we do.

4.  Confirmation: encourage software implementors to confirm a valid  
ULabel as the user's intended input, where possible and appropriate

The last one I discussed mostly after the second meeting slot, but it  
seemed to help people feel much more comfortable with having software  
map user input to something valid.

I believe this is a reality-based approach, but that's only insofar as  
I understand reality!

Lisa

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