🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1hvu79INN4qf@rodan.UU.NET> avg@rodan.UU.NET (Vadim Antonov) writes:
 > Dik, i never insisted that all European languages belong to
 > the single group -- how many are the ISO Latin-X sets?
 > My point was that there obviously are identifyable meta-alpahbets
 > covering several languages.
I do think that the number in several is very small.
 > 
 >            Or dutch, where the letter combination ij is sorted either
 > >amongst i as a double letter, or amongst y as a single letter, or
 > >between y and z as a single letter, depending on who does the sorting?
 > 
 > If a combination of letters is treated as a letter IT IS A LETTER.
 > Then add it to the alphabet and let the keyboard driver (which surely
 > knows the language -- simply because there are different keyboard
 > layouts) to handle the matter.
Still wrong.  Take the dutch ij.  I have one typewriter that has the ij
on a single key, but all typewriters sold the last 20 years and all
computer keyboards sold in the Netherlands are not specific dutch.  I
would be surprised if there is even a large number of computer keyboards
sold that is not US, UK or German.  So how would the keyboard driver deal
with the 'ij' combination?  When I enter the combination it can either be
the single letter ij (some dutch people say there is no such single letter),
or two letters, depending on context.  So must the keyboard driver look
at the context (e.g. it is a french loadnword like bijoux so that ij is
really two letters), or what?

Sorting is extremely context sensitive, even in a single language.  As
another person already mentioned in english you sort McNeill as if it
is MacNeill.  Similar the abbreviation St. which can be either Street or
Saint.  (Moreover, when sorting names I would prefer to sort C. van der Bilt
under V if it is an American and under B if it is a Dutchman ;-).)

To me it appears very silly to put more than superficial sorting
information in the encoding.  The remainder must be handled by the
applications (through library programs).  And indeed, that may require
table look-up.
 > 
 > The idea of visual encoding (and one letter-onr glyph is nothing more
 > than a compressed image of the text) is simply wrong because it
 > drops valuable information readily available at the point of the CREATION
 > of the text but not later.
But as I said, such information is not readily available at the point of
creation, only if the system asks everytime.  That would be silly as most
text is not sorted anyway.
-- 
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj  amsterdam, nederland
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn  amsterdam, nederland; e-mail: dik@cwi.nl