How are `Name` vs `ShortName` vs `Description` intended to be used

[lucacasonato]

Hey! I'm sorry if this is not the right place to ask these questions - if a different place is better, I'm happy to submit the question there. Now to the question:

<ScheduledStopPoint> supports specifying all of <Name>, <ShortName> and <Description>. While looking at Trenitalia's recently (newly) published NeTEx data, I have found that they specify all three of these to be the same identical string. E.g <Name>Bologna C.le/AV</Name><ShortName>Bologna C.le/AV</ShortName><Description>Bologna C.le/AV</Description>.

The Norwegian NeTEx profile suggests that <Description> should be used to provide supplemental data to the <Name> (and thus not a copy). This was also my understanding.

In GTFS, things are similar. There, the recommendation is to not put the same string both in stop_name and stop_desc (the equivalents of <Name> and <Description> respectively.

What is the real recommendation here? I think the duplicated fields don't serve much purpose, and mostly will result in MMTIS systems ignoring the <Description> (of filtering it's value) as it is deemed not useful to display alongside the identical <Name>. I think it would be a good improvement to the specification to recommend that the same string not be provided in both <Name> and <Description>, but rather that <Description> should be supplemental information to the name.

Thanks!

[thbar]

Hi! Asking questions here is fine!

While I'm not a long time NeTEx contributor yet: this type of repetition is quite frequent when adoption starts on any given data ecosystem. In "best effort mode", people try to fill the fields etc (like you saw in GTFS).

This is a good point to raise of course: we could probably provide a guideline here, e.g. stating that maybe having ShortName and Name equal is maybe ok (not doing so could result in systems showing blank stuff at times), but providing the same for Description is not (it takes place for nothing).

Providing fallback rules maybe could be good too, e.g. if Name is not provided, use ShortName.

We can keep this issue opened to think about it more, and let others chime in.

Thanks for raising that point, we'll give it more thought.

[Aurige]

Name is usually expected to be provided (some profiles are making it mandatory) : so to me, having ShortName but not name should be avoided. The main initial idea behind was to use ShortName in cases where your display environment has size limitation.

I agree that that Description should be used to provide supplemental information, but there is no specific NeTEx rule here, it's more a profile level rule.