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From: jeg@hector.UUCP (Judy Grass)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: International Collating Sequence
Message-ID: <3046@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Date: Wed, 30-Sep-87 13:24:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulysses.3046
Posted: Wed Sep 30 13:24:48 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Oct-87 22:45:31 EDT
References: <2706@sol.ARPA> <379119b2.b88e@apollo.uucp> <2752@sol.ARPA>
Sender: daemon@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com
Reply-To: jeg@hector (Judy Grass)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 27

>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

Even given an international sequence, you will still have a problem.  Your
sequence is based on the roman alphabet.  There are a LOT of languages
that do not use that alphabet.  A standardized transcription for
each language will have to be chosen.  I know of at least five methods
of transcribing Russian that are considered standard for some purpose.
Japanese has several different transcriptions.  Chinese too.  I don't
know how to come up with one transcription system that will cover that
kind of range of languages.  My first impulse would be to use some
variant of the IPA (international phonet alphabet), but transcriptions
are spelling to spelling translations.  Phonetic approaches aren't
particular relevant.
				-- J. Grass     ATT Bell Labs,  Murray Hill NJ
						ulysses!jeg