> You've got your terms wrong, but I would dispute this. AaBbCcDdEeFfGg is
> normal for English (remember the alphabet chart in your classroom, Mark?);
> aAbBcCdDeEfFgG is not. I would consider...
> to be correct in English. See
> http://www.indigo.ie/egt/standards/capsmall.html for a discussion of the
The examples you cite in your paper seem to have little to do with
ordering of words.
1. Outlines...
From your principle, you you would sort I<II<...A<B...<1<2...<a<b...
I don't know about Ireland, but in the US (or at least California; can't
speak for Easterners) we would not sort digits between uppercase and
lowercase.
> "order of honour" ... "feeling" ... August should precede august
This is rather circular. Lots of people have "feelings", and not all of
these are the same as yours.
> We write Aachen. We don't write aAchen.
I'm puzzled. What does the fact that we capitalize the first letter
within a word have to do with the order of words?
> Historically, CAPITAL LETTERS existed before the small letters. (Well, they DID.)
I take it you would then sort Z<J<W!
We do not, in general sort each letter by its historical introduction.
Myself, I don't care either way. The only real issue is what people's
expectations are for real sorted list; that is established by looking at
live examples (dictionaries, phonebooks, etc.). The COED is certainly
strong evidence for one direction; most of the other dictionaries we
have consulted use the other (lowercase before uppercase).
In the end, ideally you would have a toggle, as ISO CD 14561 specifies.
Mark
> --
> Michael Everson, Everson Gunn Teoranta
> 15 Port Chaeimhghein Mochtarach; Baile Atha Cliath 2; Iire (Ireland)
> Guthain: +353 1 478-2597, +353 1 283-9396
> http://www.indigo.ie/egt
> 27 Pairc an Fhiithlinn; Baile an Bhsthair; Co. Atha Cliath; Iire
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:34 EDT