[B-Greek] RE: Frustrated Greek Learner!!! (AlphabeticizingGreek)

George F. Somsel gfsomsel at juno.com
Wed Sep 8 09:36:04 EDT 2004


On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 23:19:57 +1000 "Alex and Alison Hopkins"
<alexali at surf.net.au> writes:
> (Rod Decker) >Unfortunately, FileMaker does not sort correctly. You 
> can
> specify a Unicode sort (in the Sort dialog, check "Override field's
> language for sort" and specify Unicode), but this is strictly in 
> Unicode
> code point sequence--which is not alphabetical with diacritics. The
> other option to sort by a specific language *does* list Greek, but 
> it is
> a monotonic sort. I've been using a numeric field for most of my
> work--but that's largely due to a carry over of that field from 
> earlier,
> pre-Unicode versions of FM. I haven't worked with the new version 
> long
> enough or had enough time to see how one might go about sorting
> polytonic correctly--if it can be done. I suspect it is possible, 
> but
> not easily. (Prob. would require a custom sort based on a custom 
> list,
> etc.)
> 
> That's what I thought was probably the case.  I'd be confident that 
> the
> sorting can be done, judging by the sorting I've done using the 
> Visual
> Basic language, though the syntax will be different for FM's macro
> language, of course.  I did indeed write a custom sort based on a 
> custom
> list;  tedious, but not overly taxing.  I assumed precomposed 
> letters,
> but it wouldn't be difficult to handle non-precomposed letters 
> (what's
> the right technical word?!) as the accents can safely be ignored 
> for
> alphabeticization.
> 
> Thanks for the feedback.  I imagine that Access would be pretty much 
> at
> the same stage, ie now able to work with Unicode and therefore of 
> some
> use for Greek, but without the ability to do the customized sorting 
> we
> would wish.  But this is a guess - does anyone know?  It certainly
> didn't strike me as suitable for serious NT Greek work when I last
> looked at it with such a view in mind, but that was not the current
> version, which is itself now some years old.
> 
> Alex Hopkins
> Melbourne, Australia
> 
_____________

Since computers are based on numbers and unicode is no exception, it
should be possible to write a script that would sort based on the numeric
value of the characters -- whether precomposed or not.  This would
probably involve the use of a look-up table to determine the correct
order.

george
gfsomsel



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