phone types

[ginny listman]

On Wed, 27 Dec 2000, Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet wrote:

> >I'm looking to clean-up the database, and one thing I would like to
> >enforce is that phone numbers consist of the following: 01234567890+-()
> 
>   That is probably a good idea. Whatever it is, the characterset should be
>   uniform across the IP (and routing) registries!

Are there any other characters we should include that would take into
consideration non-US, non-CA phone numbers?

> 
> >In the future, if you fill out the phone line with something like:
> >1-543.433.8765 (this is my pager)
> >what gets store in the database, and displayed in whois:
> >(543) 433-8765
> 
>   This does not sound like a good idea to me.
>   Throwing info away and/or re-writing user-supplied info can get you into
>   trouble - unless you know *very* well what you are doing (e.g. by
>   looking at very well-defined semantics).
> 

As I look at what is currently stored in the phone fields of the current
database, making the above assumption/conversion seems reasonable.  A
phone number should be a phone number, and not have other info stored with
it.  It is my intention to define this semantics in our registration
software - both web based and internal tools.  Do you have a problem with
the format?  With or without ()?  If there is another format that is more
socially accepted, let me know.  This format is not a definite, just an
idea.

> >Well at least for those phone number in the US.  Other country phone
> >numbers would be stored as entered.  Just working on uniformity.
> 
>   Doesn't sound like a uniform approach to me :-)
>   Is there any harm done to any US/CA-based consumers of the data to
>   include the +1 ?
> 

I guess being only familiar with US phone numbers, I'm not sure how to
handle other countries.  CA phone numbers are similar to US, and can be
included in the same format.  As far as other countries, I guess we'll
handle them as we find out the proper format.  I have no objections to
proceeding US/CA phone numbers with +1.

 > >Ginny
> 
>   Wilfried.
>