DR-16-0018: WML: need sort method for special characters [for today's call]

[Francis Cave]

Try again...

In the first paragraph, for "cannot be done" read "can only be done".
Clearly a serious finger malfunction...

Francis



-----Original Message-----
From: Francis Cave [mailto:francis at franciscave.com] 
Sent: 19 December 2016 16:41
To: keld at keldix.com; 'MURATA Makoto' <eb2m-mrt at asahi-net.or.jp>
Cc: 'SC 34 WG4' <e-SC34-WG4 at ecma-international.org>
Subject: RE: DR-16-0018: WML: need sort method for special characters [for
today's call]


In the first paragraph or "cannot be done" ready "can only be done". Sorry!

Francis



-----Original Message-----
From: Francis Cave [mailto:francis at franciscave.com]
Sent: 19 December 2016 16:33
To: keld at keldix.com; 'MURATA Makoto' <eb2m-mrt at asahi-net.or.jp>
Cc: 'SC 34 WG4' <e-SC34-WG4 at ecma-international.org>
Subject: RE: DR-16-0018: WML: need sort method for special characters [for
today's call]


Keld

You may or may not be correct in your view that there is a user requirement
that fields be sortable according to the current locale. However, if there
is such a user requirement, it isn't currently met by OOXML or by
implementations. Support for specifying the current locale as the sort
method would involve an extension to OOXML and as such cannot be done by
amendment or revision of the standard, not by Technical Corrigendum, so this
is a big deal. Although this might be a relatively simple change, e.g. by
changing ST_SortMethod to allow any string (§18.18.73 of
ISO/IEC 29500-1:2016), it could not be made mandatory for implementations to
support these new values without breaking existing implementations, and if
they do not already do so, that suggests that there hasn't be much market
pressure that would persuade them to implement the enhancement.

I note that ODF doesn't appear to have this feature either (although it has
a similar feature – §19.865 text:sort-algorithm – for sorting text, e.g.
bibliographies), and in §19.685 table:order there is the following note:

	Note: Sorting is locale and implementation-dependent.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that demand for this feature is very
limited, at least in office document applications.

Francis



-----Original Message-----
From: keld at keldix.com [mailto:keld at keldix.com]
Sent: 18 December 2016 20:19
To: MURATA Makoto <eb2m-mrt at asahi-net.or.jp>
Cc: SC 34 WG4 <e-SC34-WG4 at ecma-international.org>
Subject: Re: DR-16-0018: WML: need sort method for special characters [for
today's call]

I am not aware of the reason why this is so.

But anyway, why not then use the 14651 tailorable ordering in its template
form, which is equivalent to UTS#10 - as the universal sorting in OOXML?

I would think it was a user requirement that fields are sortable according
to the current locale, eg a list of names. 

Having the sorting order not being changeable creates troubles for users
too.

best regards
keld


On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 04:48:21AM +0900, MURATA Makoto wrote:
> The sort order of Excel cannot be changed without causing troubles to 
> users.
> 
> Regards,
> Makoto
> 
> 2016-12-08 3:17 GMT+09:00 Keld Simonsen <keld at keldix.com>:
> 
> > I propose that you use the locale of the current process, and the 
> > implied sorting sequence for special cheracters there, Or at least 
> > the sorting specified in ISO/IEC
> > 14651
> > or the equivalent Unicode specifcation.
> >
> > best regards
> > keld Simonsen
> >
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Praying for the victims of the Japan Tohoku earthquake
> 
> Makoto