I was searching the Web the other day for a summary of DIN 5007 to
complement what Otto Stolz has already given us. What I found was rather
interesting in light of recent discussions about "what DIN 5007 says."
From <http://www.berkhan.de/manual_e/data/chap5-10.htm>, a description
of the SORT command in Omikron Basic 6 for Power Mac:
> "In the case of string fields, the sort operation is performed
> strictly according to DIN 5007, i.e., upper and lower case are not
> considered."
From
<http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/internal/PACK/latex/7.2b/makeindex.1.html>,
a man page for makeindex, a Unix-style index processor:
> "-g Employ German word ordering in the index, in accord with rules
> set forth in DIN 5007. By default, makeindex employs a word ordering
> in which precedence is: symbols, numbers, uppercase letters, lowercase
> letters. The sequence in German word ordering is: symbols, lowercase
> letters, uppercase letters, numbers."
Fascinating, isn't it? One reference claims to support DIN 5007
"strictly" by ignoring case, while the other equates DIN 5007 support
with a more-or-less EBCDIC sequence. And neither makes any mention of
numeric sorting.
Gee, I wish standards organizations were subsidized to the point where
they could offer free copies of their standards. That way, people might
be inclined to procure copies of the pertinent standards and follow them,
instead of relying on summaries of summaries and missing the mark,
sometimes by a lot.
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
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