Re: alphabetic sorting

[Tobias Burnus <burnus@gmx.de>]

Hallo Johannes, Hans and hi list members,

> There is a dictionary order, which sorts the letter "a (sorry I have only
> a terminal available that wouldn't print all latin1 letters) in the same
> position as a, in conflicting positions after it (so Bar comes befor B"ar).
"a == ä

> The other one is the phone book order, which treats "a as ae, so J"ager and
> Jaeger will be sorted at the same position.

Well using texutil --quote one gets "a -> a etc. (I think also "s->s
which is wrong):
#D \startopsomming[opelkaar]
#D \som  \type{\name}: csnames are stripped
#D \som  \type{{}}: are removed
#D \som  \type{\"e}: and alike are translated into \type{"e} etc.
#D \som  \type{"e}: is translated into an \type{e} and \type{b} etc.
#D \som  \type{||}: becomes \type{-}
#D \som  \type{\-}: also becomes \type{-}
#D \stopopsomming

I think we should define either sorting as default (probably ä->ae) and
support the other via overwriteing the sortkey (--quote is probably
applied latter so it would be obsolete).

The question is: Shouldn't \SS (=\sz, \SZ (?), "s, "S, "Z, "z) -> ss
(type b), æ = ae {type ?}, \oe -> oe. Þ (thorn) -> ?, ã, õ etc. be
treated "generically" for all languages so one only needs to overwrite
the values? I think ó, ò and ô are sorted as "o" in all languages.

Tobias

PS: Have a look at sortkey, l.493 in
texmf/tex/context/base/enco-ini.tex.