[Dspace-general] Sort order of author names with diacritics

[David Goodman]

Unfortunately, the correct sort order differs in each language. Thus it is impossible to write a general algorithm without knowing the language of the author's name. Libraries have faced this in different ways: the usual current method is to ignore the accent mark foor sorting and file o-umlaut as if it were plain o. The various library systems have sort algorithms for doing this. (In more primitive computer systems they were sometimes changed to the plain letter and the diacritic marking ignored altogether, but unicode has made that unnecessary)
 
(the previous general practice was to file it the way it would sound in the native language; this is obviously no help.)
 
David Goodman
Assoc. Prof. of Library and Information  Science
Long Island University
dgoodman at liu.edu

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: dspace-general-bounces at mit.edu on behalf of Frank 
	Sent: Mon 4/5/2004 10:29 PM 
	To: dspace-general at mit.edu 
	Cc: wcs at iist.unu.edu 
	Subject: [Dspace-general] Sort order of author names with diacritics
	
	

	We just started using DSpace to build a repository of research reports and
	have been very impressed so far.
	
	But we have a problem: author names involving diacritical marks are sorted
	very strangely.  For example, the name Ozler, where the O has an umlaut,
	entered as Ö sorts between Azam and Azzoni.  It seems that the O-umlaut
	sorts as an A.  Similar is Soricut when the S has a cedilla (Ş).
	Soricut sorts between Aoki and Appleton: again the diacritic sorts as an A.
	
	These names were input using the bulk input method, using the standard
	&#nnn; encoding.
	
	If such names are entered in forms using this encoding the resulting names
	sort before any unaccented characters: looks like they are sorted as
	starting with &.
	
	The database was created with Unicode enabled.
	
	We would be grateful for any help.
	
	Regards,
	
	Frank Wong
	
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