I have always had a problem with apps that handle addresses. I am starting a 
project that will have to send mail (statements and such). The problem is this 
pesky international address convention problem.

US addresses:
RECIPIENT
HOUSE_NUMBER STREET_NAME [STREET_TYPE] [STREET_DIRECTION] [BUILDING] [FLOOR] 
[APARTMENT]
LOCALITY PROVINCE_ABBREVIATION POSTAL_CODE
UNITED STATES

Canadian:
RECIPIENT
[UNIT_NUMBER]-CIVIC_NUMBER [STREET_NUMBER] [STREET_TYPE] STREET_NAME 
[STREET_DIRECTION]
LOCALITY PROVINCE_ABBREVIATION POSTAL_CODE
CANADA

UK:
RECIPIENT
[FLOOR] [APARTMENT]
[BUILDING]
[HOUSE_NUMBER] STREET_NAME
[DEPENDENT_LOCALITY]
LOCALITY
POSTAL_CODE
UNITED KINGDOM

Most of the apps that I use today, ignore this altogether and just force the 
user to accept US mailing order and field names. If you are lucky, you are not 
limited to the length input of some of the fields and you can maybe force your 
input to approximate what the address should look like.

I found this website:
http://www.addressdoctor.com/en/countries-data/address-formats.html

So here's the question! How far should one push creating an interface that 
allows the user to customize the printed address for the recipient? 

Obviously, you could go nuts and have a popup to select the country and get the 
appropriate fields in the correct order. Or like most software just ignore the 
issue and assume that the rest of the world will finally begin to conform to 
the obviously perfect and superior format of United States of America addresses 
:-) !

What are youse guys doing? I wonder what Apple does with this? I mean does 
Apple ever send mail? I am trying to remember if I ever purchased anything from 
apple and had it shipped. Is there one interface for the entire world to 
collect address information? How is this data normalized? Separate table for 
country?

Ted
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