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From: kimcm@diku.UUCP (Kim Christian Madsen)
Newsgroups: net.internat
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Alphabetical Order
Message-ID: <40@diku.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Nov-85 22:37:56 EST
Article-I.D.: diku.40
Posted: Mon Nov 11 22:37:56 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Nov-85 07:47:54 EST
References: <125100001@ima.UUCP> <2435@sunybcs.UUCP> <787@inset.UUCP> <35@diku.UUCP> <36@diku.UUCP>
Reply-To: kimcm@diku.UUCP (Kim Christian Madsen)
Organization: DIKU, U of Copenhagen, DK
Lines: 39

In article <36@diku.UUCP> keld@diku.UUCP (Keld J|rn Simonsen) writes:
>Well it is not true that 'aa' always can be replaced with
>a-with-a-circle-on-top in Danish (or Norwegian) writing.
>You may have connected words like 'ekstraarbejde' = extra work,
>where the two a's cannot be replaced.
>The same is true for 'ae' - eg. in 'sagaen' = the saga 
>and for 'oe' eg. 'koen' = the cow.

Which leads to the conclusion that either we have to do it by table
lookup or not do it at all. There are always exceptions, and if we can't
live with some compromises we cannot get out of the place!

Even if one does the job opn a national basis there will be troubles,
because no language is frozen, as an example is the danish letter
a-with-circle-on-top which was invented in this century and made official
in 1948 - the same can happen again!

Furthermore the improved communication between different parts of the world
leads to more and more 'foreign words' being accepted in each national
language and new words are evolved and incorporated into the language and
older and rarely used words disappear.

Computer Scientists has always thought that sorting words was a piece of
cake, but people whose work is to make dictionaries might use a computer
sorted wordlist as a first draft and then do the rest of the work by hand.

But if we continue to use the ordinary ASCII sorting method, and it is
recoqnized in further more applications we might end up with making
ASCII sorting the standard sorting method, but I wonder if this makes
anybody happy -- save the programmers )-;

But who cares, some people like the old english and refuse to read 
Shakespeare's pieces unless it's in the 'original' old english version,
others are blasting americans (you know the people from over the sea,
NO, not australians YANKEE's...(-;) because they don't speak a 'proper'
english (and not even proper american!!! )-;) Old traditions must fall
and new rules be established -- that's the way of progress.

				Kim Chr. Madsen