Ability to handle names that consist of a single letter

[ajeanmahoney]

Description

An author has requested that her name not be displayed with a period after it in the RFC header. Her full name is "Q Misell". Currently xml2rfc places a period after her first name because it creates an initial from <author fullname="Q Misell" role="editor" surname="Misell">:

Current:

Automated Certificate Management Environment              Q. Misell, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                                  AS207960
Intended status: Standards Track                         14 January 2025
Expires: 18 July 2025

Requested:

Automated Certificate Management Environment               Q Misell, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                                  AS207960
Intended status: Standards Track                         14 January 2025
Expires: 18 July 2025

Something to consider, however, is what a code change to support this would do with author entries where a period is not provided in the initials attribute because xml2rfc adds them automatically.

Code of Conduct

• [x] I agree to follow the IETF's Code of Conduct

[kesara]

I didn't find any RFC specifying the author name format. The examples in RFC 7841 has the format: initial. surname. ^1

Another option with current xml2rfc, is to just display the surname. This can be done by adding initials="".

[cabo]

I didn't find any RFC specifying the author name format.

That would be RFC 7322, Section 4.12. for "Author's Address" or "Authors' Addresses" Section, and Section 4.1.1 for the front page.

[rjsparks]

Add this to the collection of evidence that we need to stop trying to disect names and treat them as blobs.

[jrlevine]

Yup. Single letter first names aren't that unusual, e.g. former UN General Secretary U Thant

I know someone whose last name is O, no punctuation, just O

[mferguson-rpc]

Just a note that this issue affects RFC-to-be 9799, which just entered AUTH48 state.

[kesara]

@mferguson-rpc, Is the workaround I mentioned in https://github.com/ietf-tools/xml2rfc/issues/1204#issuecomment-2603449999 acceptable for this RFC-to-be?

For example:

    <author fullname="Q Misell" initials="" role="editor" surname="Misell">

will generate:

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)                       Misell, Ed.

and

Author's Address

   Q Misell (editor)
   ...

[TheEnbyperor]

I have made a PR to fix this to my liking in #1246.

[kesara]

Fixed with #1246