Stream: implementers
Topic: Internationalization and string search
Alexander Zautke (Apr 23 2018 at 13:42):
Hi everyone,
@Christiaan Knaap and I just had a discussion about how to interpret the section in the FHIR specification about case and accent normalization.
It states that when executing a search with a string parameter, accents should be normalized as a default behavior. Could someone please elaborate if this is intentionally restricted to only accents and not other diacritical signs like circumflex, cedilla, etc? From my understanding, these glyphs would technically not be an accent.
Thank you!
Lloyd McKenzie (Apr 23 2018 at 15:28):
It's intended to apply to all diacritical signs. I.e. search would only be on the base alphabetic characters A-Z. If you submit a change request, we can clarify in the spec
Alexander Zautke (Apr 23 2018 at 16:59):
Thanks for the clarification. Will do.
Based on this, am I right to assume that :exact matches if the string is visually identical? So, even if different Unicode characters are used to form a letter, a server is expected to return a result? E.g. the search for "ä" (U+00E4 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS) would match even if the search requests contains "ä" (U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A + U+0308 COMBINING DIAERESIS)?
Lloyd McKenzie (Apr 23 2018 at 17:33):
Exact match would do whatever your language does when you do a String.equals(x). I presume that they look for exact unicode matches, but I don't know for sure.
Alexander Zautke (Apr 23 2018 at 18:31):
Would you be in favour of additionally adding a sentence stating that the handling of :exact is within the discretion of the server?
I just did a quick test, you will definitely get different results across implementations.
Lloyd McKenzie (Apr 23 2018 at 18:32):
That's probably a good idea.
Vadim Peretokin (Apr 24 2018 at 06:43):
How come others haven't ran into it already? This seems like a big problem. Is it just that the normal expectation right now is that the special characters just don't work so people don't bother?
Alexander Zautke (Apr 24 2018 at 07:04):
Could someone please activate my GForge account?
Lloyd McKenzie (Apr 24 2018 at 16:04):
Looks like you've already been approved. Let me know if you have issues.
Alexander Zautke (Apr 25 2018 at 11:56):
Added GForge Item #16016 and #16017.
Thank you for discussing this :)
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
