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From: sandi@apollo.uucp (Sandra Martin)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: International Collating Sequence
Message-ID: <379119b2.b88e@apollo.uucp>
Date: Tue, 29-Sep-87 08:50:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: apollo.379119b2.b88e
Posted: Tue Sep 29 08:50:00 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 30-Sep-87 06:53:57 EDT
References: <2706@sol.ARPA>
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Mass.
Lines: 38

Lawrence Crowl @ U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY writes:
>I submit that we need not only an international character code, but an
>international collating sequence as well.  Such a sequence should be very
>simple.  There should be no "double letter" rules or unnatural separation
>of accented letters from base letters.  I see no reason not to embed the
>collating sequence within the numeric codes for the characters.
>
>For example, a character set meeting these criteria might have the following
>ordering:
>
>   A a `A `a "A "a .A .a  ...  AE ae B b C c ,C ,c D d E e 'E 'e `E `e ...

I agree that an international collating sequence would be nice, but you
can't make arbitrary rules against double letters and separating characters
with diacriticals. In Spanish, 'ch' sorts between 'c' and 'd' in the
alphabet (likewise, 'll' comes between 'l' and 'm'). How would your
sequence handle this situation? You cannot ignore it just because it's
inconvenient.

In the Swedish alphabet, a(ring), a", and o" appear AFTER 'z'. They DO
NOT sort with the unaccented a's and o's. In Danish, the 'ae' ligature
also appears near the end of the alphabet. Why should an international
collating sequence fail to recognize these realities? A few months back,
Erland Sommarskog of ENEA Data in Stockholm posted an article to this
newsgroup in which he noted (perhaps partly in jest) that if the Swedes
had invented computers, English-speakers would have had to accept the
fact that 'v' and 'w' are equivalent. As an English speaker, I'm sure
you wouldn't want to accept such a restriction. Why should people from
other countries have to accept an unnatural order for their characters?

The fact is that there is no way to construct ONE international collating
sequence. In German, the a" sorts with the other a's. In Swedish, it
sorts at the end of the alphabet. So whatever solution is invented, it
must be flexible enough to handle these realities.

   Sandra Martin, Apollo Computer
   UUCP:  ...{mit-erl,mit-eddie,yale,uw-beaver,decvax}!apollo!sandi
   ARPA:  apollo!sandi@eddie.mit.edu