Address rendering (print/write/display)
This requirement calls for the description of rules for the formatting or rendering of addresses on mail items and maps. Rendering rules specify the order and placement of the components of an address on a label. For some address types there can be more than one appropriate rendition, depending on such parameters as language, user preference etc. These include the position of the Arabic numeric characters and Roman alphabetic characters in East-Asian addresses.
Firstly, address rendering standards are important for mailers and mail carriers to streamline mail production and processing. For example, even if the delivery address on a mail item contains all the pieces of information that are required to identify a delivery point, the mail carrier can still regard it as invalid if the arrangement of the components is inappropriate. The correct order of elements for a French address will not necessarily be correct for a US address, and vice versa. Moreover, many Asian address systems use the opposite order of address elements than European ones, placing the root element of the address hierarchy first. Incorrectly addressed mail may not be delivered and increases the costs of delivery. Therefore, mail carriers provide guidelines (‘standards’) on how an address shall be formatted on mail items that are submitted for delivery. By adhering to these rules, mailers increase the success rate of deliveries and reduce the cost of mail processing.
An important application of rendered addresses is the use of automated reading systems for sorting. One well-known aspect of this is optical character recognition; other aspects include algorithms for joined-script analysis and word recognition that are necessary before methods for address decomposition, parsing and address component recognition can be applied, which in turn are required for sorting. The algorithms require specifically defined address structures, which need to remain as consistent as possible in order to achieve the highest possible read rates. Automated mail processing is mostly applicable to a country’s domestic mail, therefore automatic reading systems can usually be adjusted to cater for a specific country.
International mailers have to cope with a variety of address formatting rules coming from various countries, cultures and languages. Their work is much easier when information about various address formats is expressed in a unified and, possibly, computer readable way. This leads to standardized language(s) for the encoding of address formatting information that is readable for computers and humans.
Secondly, there is a requirement for rendering rules that can be applied to addresses that are displayed on maps. The increase in the use of addresses on handheld devices, such as GPS units and mobile maps, has raised the importance of this requirement. Most of the handheld devices on which the addresses are displayed are sold and used in multiple countries, therefore it is important to be able to specify rendering rules for addresses of more than one country.
In the reviewed standards rendering rules are typically formulated on the basis of defined elements, classification of address types and classification of address lines. National rendition standards sometimes provide dictionaries (look-up tables) of valid abbreviations that are needed to limit the length of address lines so that they can fit into the address window or meet limitations imposed by a standard (e.g. French 38 characters per line).
The reviewed standards that contain rendering rules are defined by postal operators on a national level. UPU S42 provides a means to keep and exchange national rendering information in a uniform encoding.
While none of the reviewed standards has rendering rules for non-postal processing purposes, vendors of handheld devices seem to have a requirement for these rules. Research is still required to understand how best to formulate these rendering rules for mapping purposes.