Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!jarthur!usc!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!chalmers.se!cs.chalmers.se!jeffrey From: jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se (Alan Jeffrey) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: Polyglot List Issue (Really: Does Latin-1 cover Western Europe ?) Message-ID: <4366@undis.cs.chalmers.se> Date: 7 Feb 91 13:31:59 GMT References: <1991Feb1.231640.3959@visix.com> <1991Feb4.211114.19161@visix.com> <1991Feb5.174923.16236@sq.sq.com> Organization: Dept. of CS, Chalmers, Sweden Lines: 29 In article <1991Feb5.174923.16236@sq.sq.com> lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) writes: >amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) writes: >I think also that the distinction between glyph-name (ae-ligature), glyph >and position in collation sequence must be made clear, especially as >collating sequence varies from nationality to nationality. Once we get so >far advanced that we can conceive of printing a Welsh dictionary, we'd better >be able to sort the entries correctly :-) Agreed totally---one of the best tests for `is this glyph a separate letter or just a decorated form of another letter?' is whether it alphabetizes and/or capitalizes differently. So French \'a can be regarded as an a with an accent, but Swedish \"a can't, as it alphebetizes to the back of the dictionary. On this basis I'd claim `\oe' as a separate letter, as it capitalizes to `\OE' whereas `oe' capitalizes to `Oe'. In general, collation is much more difficult than it appears---not only does it vary from language to language (is \"o before or after p?) but also from application to application (is `McCarthy' before or after `May'?). And you should try convincing BibTeX that some people's surnames come before their given names... Cheers, Alan. -- Alan Jeffrey Tel: +46 31 72 10 98 jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se Department of Computer Sciences, Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden