Confusing Alphanumeric Characters to Avoid in IDs?

[nelsonic]

Most computer scientists or "developers" consider the "happy path" when building software and don't get to see the "other side" ... I have seen all aspects of the "stack" from having worked in "customer service" (call centres) and had to field calls from angry/frustrated people. Putting in a little bit more effort up-front to create human-friendly IDs pays later. I feel that the default needs to be usability and accessibility; that's why this issue exists.

Todo

• [ ] Auto-generated IDs should exclude certain "confusing" characters to avoid confusing people who are reading or typing them.

  For example: 0 (zero) looks like O (Capital o) and I (capital i) looks like l (lower-case L).

  • [ ] Collate full list of "confusing characters"
  • [ ] Calculate probability of collision when using reduced character set

Recommended Reading

• [ ] https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/53341/are-there-any-letters-numbers-that-should-be-avoided-in-an-id
• [ ] https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/21076/are-there-numbers-and-letters-to-avoid-for-activation-codes-via-sms
• [ ] https://typography.guru/journal/letters-symbols-misrecognition/
• [ ] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541865/
• [ ] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11919708/set-of-unambiguous-looking-letters-numbers-for-user-input

[nelsonic]

GOTO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base58

[nelsonic]

Basically, what I'm describing is Base56 I love it when the thing I'm thinking about already has a name and "validation"! The worst thing is being "original" (i.e. "crazy") and having to "convince" people of an idea! This is soooooo much more time-effective. Just go read this wikipedia article that someone else wrote! 🎉