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From: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: International Collating Sequence
Message-ID: <2752@sol.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 29-Sep-87 15:55:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: sol.2752
Posted: Tue Sep 29 15:55:42 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Oct-87 04:16:21 EDT
References: <2706@sol.ARPA> <379119b2.b88e@apollo.uucp>
Reply-To: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 31

In article <379119b2.b88e@apollo.uucp> sandi@apollo.uucp (Sandra Martin) writes:
)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 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.
)[Followed by lots of examples of incompatabilty between national collating
)sequences.]

You've missed my point.  No international character code will support the
various national collating sequences.  If we have an international collating
sequence, ignoring national sequences, then we can have a very simple coding
scheme which naturally supports a simple collating sequence.  An international
sequence tells me what to do when collating foreign words, etc.  This leaves a
programmer with two choices, sorting based on the international sequence or
sorting based on his or her national sequence.  Any international character
code will make the latter difficult, but the former can be easy with a good
character code and collating sequence pair.

I am not suggesting forcing people to abandon national sequences, just giving
them an international alternative that is easy and efficient.
-- 
  Lawrence Crowl		716-275-9499	University of Rochester
		      crowl@cs.rochester.edu	Computer Science Department
...!{allegra,decvax,rutgers}!rochester!crowl	Rochester, New York,  14627