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From: walters@io.UUCP (Tim Walters)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: International Collating Sequence
Message-ID: <393@io.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Oct-87 00:53:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: io.393
Posted: Thu Oct  1 00:53:49 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 5-Oct-87 01:07:55 EDT
References: <2706@sol.ARPA> <379119b2.b88e@apollo.uucp> <2752@sol.ARPA>
Reply-To: walters@wally.UUCP (Tim Walters)
Organization: Interleaf, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 23

In article <2752@sol.ARPA> crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl) writes:
>I am not suggesting forcing people to abandon national sequences, just giving
>them an international alternative that is easy and efficient.

I'm afraid I can't see the advantage of a sorting sequence that's easy
and efficient but doesn't sort letters the way you want. I would never
use a routine which put, say, 'w' after 'z', even if it was efficient
and followed accepted practice in Europe; yet this is what your
proposed collating sequence would look like to someone in Sweden.
National sequences aren't just a matter of local taste; they are THE
way dictionaries, phone books, book indexes, and everything else are
sorted in a particular country.

Since there isn't really any acceptable common collating sequence, I
would much rather see an efficient standardized routine which can
collate according to any national standard. I would much rather use
such a routine in my code, knowing that it could be configured to
produce acceptable output for any country.

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