JW24a (i18n sort ordering)

In my initial comments on the DASL spec, I wrote:

    The DASL spec. needs to make some policy statement about sort
    order in non-latin character sets, if only to give server
    implementors some kind of hint as to how they should handle this
    case.  There must be some books/standards available which address
    this issue, so they should be mentioned and referenced.

    (recorded as issue JW24a)

After reading through the Unicode standard's section on Sort Ordering, I now
have some thoughts on i18n sort ordering in DASL.

First, there doesn't appear to be a normative specification on sort ordering
available. The Unicode consortium, which has done a lot of work on these
issues, has a set of implementation guidelines that DASL should reference.
However, at least for the Unicode 2.0 standard (the latest version that I
have access to -- there is a new, 3.0 version that was just released), this
mainly focuses on sorting a sequence where everything is in the same
language.  But, in DASL, we could potentially receive results in multiple
languages, and I haven't run across any writing that provides guidance for
the case where the results are in multiple languages.

So, I think the best DASL can do is reference best current practice, i.e.,
the Unicode 3.0 standard's implementation guideline section on sort
ordering, and note that there is this other problem that nobody has much
insight into. We should note that it is outside of our realm of expertise to
address these i18n issues, and leave resolution firmly in the hands of
implementors.

- Jim

Received on Wednesday, 19 April 2000 18:02:45 UTC