🚀 go-pugleaf

mskuhn@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de writes:
>No, the answer that NO internationally suitable sorting algorithm (not
>only sorted character table!) is possible is too simple in my eyes.

And making everybody use the same sorting order is not workable in my
eyes.  The English words co-ordinate and co-"ordinate ("o = o with two
dots on top; this is quite correct English) should be sorted together,
but the Swedish words ost (cheese) and "ost (East) should not.  In the
former case, o and "o are the same letter and that's why they should
be kept together, in the latter case they are very, very distinct
letters with only a happenstance similarity in the way they look, and
mixing them is not going to be accepted by more than perhaps one or
two users (and those are probably programmers :).

While it is true that users to have to change when they use computers,
the sorting order is not one of the cases where they will do it.
Actually, if I were willing to change the order of the alphabet to
suit computers, I'd just as soon make everybody start using a common
language (English, Esperanto, or whatever), and make the whole
problem i18n disappear.

I18n seems to be a fun topic: any rational-sounding solution that
looks ideal from an engineering and programming standpoint gets
shouted down by a pack of change-unfriendly users.  :-)

--
Lars.Wirzenius@helsinki.fi  (finger wirzeniu@klaava.helsinki.fi)
   MS-DOS, you can't live with it, you can live without it.