Re: City name 'spell checker'

Jerry Gitomer <jgitomer_at_erols.com> wrote:
> The user would enter a postal code and either receive back the
> place name or a list box containing the appropriate place names.

The problem comes when you try to include international cities. I've been struggling with this for a little while. Maybe half of the countries around the globe use zip codes, and finding lists for almost any of them is all but impossible.

The best I've been able to come up with is dumping a gazeteer into a table and using soundex to make suggestions for people who don't get one on the nose (especially likely in languages where there is no standardized transliteration into Roman script). Of course this isn't that useful for Arabic and Chinese and other cases where things do not sound similar that would sound similar in European languages (do a J and Q sound similar in Arabic? Depends on how close to Egypt you are!).

Other things I've toyed with are: making people pick the location from a map (expensive and complicated); making people go through a series of refinements where they pick the geographically closest of 4 or 5 suggested cities until they see the one they want (doomed to failure since nobody knows where anything is); using client-side web software - Java or Javascript - to simulate familiar PC behavior where typing the name brings up a list that shortens as characters are entered (bad solution since it depends on technology that may not work or may be deactivated on the browser side); beating my head on a table until the problem goes away. None of these have really been satisfactory.

Any creative ideas?

miguel Received on Wed Dec 29 1999 - 23:48:39 CST