Mark E. Shoulson wrote at 10:03 PM on Thursday, May 13, 2004: >[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >>Dean A. Snyder asks, >> >>>Why make something we do all the time more difficult and non-standard, >>>when what we do now works very well? >> >>Please, one thing to remember about default collation is that >>it's default. It's only there when no other instructions exist. >> >> > From my understanding of the situation, it is generally best to expect >that the default collation will provide a sort that is just barely >tolerable. It's only there as a fallback, to prevent utter catastrophe; >if you want sorting actually to work properly, you need a tailored one. >Since the requirements for sorting are so varied, no default will >satisfy everyone, so the default just has to do its best to avoid >completely screwing up--barely. > >That right?
It means custom software or templates will have to be written if you want different behavior than the default. Try getting Google to implement your collation algorithms. Try getting different operating systems to agree on implementing the same collation algorithms. The same goes for all the database engines. These are the sorts of things you're up against if you want to avoid implementing your collation stuff separately on every piece of proprietary, private software. Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Assistant Research Scholar Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project Computer Science Department Whiting School of Engineering 218C New Engineering Building 3400 North Charles Street Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 cell: 717 817-4897 www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
