🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Feb5.174923.16236@sq.sq.com> lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) writes:
>amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) writes:

>I think also that the distinction between glyph-name (ae-ligature), glyph
>and position in collation sequence must be made clear, especially as
>collating sequence varies from nationality to nationality.  Once we get so
>far advanced that we can conceive of printing a Welsh dictionary, we'd better
>be able to sort the entries correctly :-)

Agreed totally---one of the best tests for `is this glyph a separate
letter or just a decorated form of another letter?' is whether it
alphabetizes and/or capitalizes differently.  So French \'a can be
regarded as an a with an accent, but Swedish \"a can't, as it
alphebetizes to the back of the dictionary.  On this basis I'd claim
`\oe' as a separate letter, as it capitalizes to `\OE' whereas `oe'
capitalizes to `Oe'.

In general, collation is much more difficult than it appears---not
only does it vary from language to language (is \"o before or after
p?) but also from application to application (is `McCarthy' before or
after `May'?).  And you should try convincing BibTeX that some
people's surnames come before their given names...

Cheers,

Alan.
-- 
Alan Jeffrey         Tel: +46 31 72 10 98         jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se
Department of Computer Sciences, Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden