Am 2000-03-10 um 12:36 h PST hat Tex Texin geschrieben:
> I am looking into conventions for Swiss collation.
> I was pointed at DIN 5007.

I have tried to find a Swiss national standard on sorting, in
<http://www.snv.ch/>, the Schweizerische Normen-Vereinigung's WWW site.
Their database referred me to German standards (though more expensive
than in Germany, cf, below):
  DIN 5007, Ausgabe:1991-04
        Ordnen von Schriftzeichenfolgen (ABC-Regeln)
  DIN 5007-2, Ausgabe:1996-05
        Ordnen von Schriftzeichenfolgen - Teil 2: Ansetzungsregeln für die
        alphabetische Ordnung von Namen
  DIN 31638, Ausgabe:1994-08
        Bibliographische Ordnungsregeln
and to international standards:
  (Vornormentwurf) prENV 13710, Ausgabe:1999-09
        European ordering rules - Ordering of characters from the Latin,
        Greek and Cyrillic scripts
  ISO 7154, Ausgabe:1983-11
        Dokumentation; bibliographische Ordnungsgrundsätze
  ISO/TR 8393, Ausgabe:1985-08
        Dokumentation; ISO bibliographische Ordnungsregeln
        (internationale bibliographische Norm-Ordnungsregeln):
        Erläuterung von bibliographischen Ordnungsgrundsätzen anhand
        von Modellregelsätzen

These titles roughly mean:
  DIN 5007, Rules for alphabetical arrangement (ABC rules)
  DIN 5007-2, ... Part 2: Assessment rules for the alphabetic arrangement
        of proper names [I don't know the correct technical term; these
        rules are about forming the sort key from a proper name, such as
        putting the family name in front, or treating "Mc" as "Mac"]
  DIN 31638 Bibliographic ordering rules
  ISO 7154 Documentation; Principles of bibliographic ordering
  ISO/TR 8393 Documentation; ISO bibliographic ordering rules
        (international bibliographic standard ordering rules):
        exemplification ...

> Is this on the web anywhere?

I don't think so. German national standards are copyright protected.
They are sold by Beuth Verlag <http://www.beuth.de/>, for considerable
amounts. E. g. DIN 5007, Part 1, a 7-pages pamphlet (A4 paper) sells
for 58,50 DM. You can order DIN standards from
<http://www.beuth.de/index.html?Online_Datenbanken>.

> Are there old and new Swiss collations,

The old DIN 5007 of 1962-11 was only about ordering of proper names.
Excerpt, my translation:
: These rules apply, as before [i. e. as of 1948-12], only to the
: alphabetical arrangement of proper names. A section on the alpha-
: betical arrangement of general terms will be added later.

The main part of that standard was on the assessment rules (now in
DIN 5007-2). Its alphabetic ordering rules boil down to:
- German Umlaute "ä", "ö", "ü" are treated as "ae", "oe", "ue",
  respectively.
- German sharp S, "ß", is treated as "ss".
- All other diacritic marks, such as accents, tremata, and cedillas,
  are entirely disregarded, e. g. "ç" = "c".
- Only characters of the Latin alphabet (as used for German) are con-
  sidered (e. g., Thorn, "þ", is not even mentioned); a footnote refers
  to DIN 1460 "Transliteration of slawic/cyrillic characters";
- Case is entirely disregarded.
- Words are treated as entities; i. e., white-space is effectively
  regarded as a single low-value character.
Option:
- In filing cabinets (and probably also in card-indices), initial
  "Sch" and "St" could be assigned separate compartments, resulting,
  e. g. in the sequence ..."Rzypinsky", "Sabel"... "Szymansky",
  "Schaaf"... "Schymura", "Staal"... "Styri", "Taal"...
  NB: this option is *only* for initial characters, not for embedded
  ones.

In contrast, the current DIN 5007,

- is about ordering arbitrary character strings; it has kept the
  "ä" = "ae" rule for lists of proper names only and has a new
  "ä" = "a" rule for general application (the former may well be
  be dropped in a later edition of DIN 5007);

- has dropped the "Sch", and "St", option (without even mentioning it);

- defines a three-level sort, as discussed many times in the Unicode
  list (1st level: base characters; 2nd level: diacritical marks and
  character variants; 3rd: level: cases);

- defines rules (or at least principles) for the ordering of characters
  not belonging to the Latin alphabet;

- defines a peculiar rule for the ordering of numbers (based on their
  respective values rather than on their representation), which does
  not really fit in a framework for ordering of character strings.

> and are the collation conventions different depending on the language
> and/or dialect being used, since the Swiss use multiple languages.

Probably.

DIN 5007 is designed for the German language. However, I do not know
of a standard for ordering French, Italian, or Raeto-Romance terms.
I am not an expert in this field, though; I simply could not find any,
in the SNV database, as mentioned above.

Best wishes,
   Otto Stolz