undefined | Better HN

0 pointsbmn__10mo ago0 comments

> how you can't "alphabetize" language names

Not so, this sort order has been standardised as part of Unicode for at least 28 years. To see it in action, pipe the list of languages as a text file through a conforming tool like `ucsort`. When Қ is falsely sorted after Ч, then the wrong algorithm or no algorithm at all has been used.

> because of course, K for Korean alphabetizes after C for Chinese

That's not how it works.

0 comments

adastra2210mo ago

Sort rules are different in different locales.

vikingerik10mo ago

It's a circular dependency: how do you sort and list the locales or languages for someone to pick one, when by definition you don't know their locale yet?

You have to either make some best-guess approximation (IP geo, browser headers, etc) or use a locale-invariant sort, both of which will be wrong in some cases.

notpushkin10mo ago

We can find a sorting order with the minimal total distance between where we place a language entry and where this entry would be in that language. If there’s no pair of languages A and Ä such that A > Ä in one and Ä > A in the other, then (I guess???) this total distance will be zero.

1 more reply

numpad010mo ago

can't you just sort all as int? the codepages usually come roughly sorted, and while no one knows which of 檎 or 橙 comes first, I don't think it'll be particularly offensive whichever way a random app did, to most.

2 more replies

mananaysiempre10mo ago

Yes, the DUCET is bound to disappoint everybody (especially users of the Latin script with diacritics, as none of them agree on the sort order and everyone’s preferences are tied to the specific subset of diacritics they need), but at least it disappoints everybody more or less equally.

(Do yourself a favor, though, and use the CLDR root collation instead of the raw DUCET—they are basically the same, except, and I’m quoting the standard here[1], “the DUCET is not entirely well-formed”.)

[1] https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/#Well_Formed_DUCET

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse