Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] diacritics and sorting

[Chris Petersen <lists forevermore net>]

> Is this a locale issue or is it more complicated?  For instance, is
> Björk alphabetized based on the fact that Ö is the last letter in the
> Icelandic alphabet or should be alphabetized based on the rules of the
> locale Rhythmbox is running in.

I don't know about icelandic, but generally, diacritics are considered
to be modifications of existing letters.  Although this is not always
the case - in Spanish, ' over vowels indicates emphasis (thus, they
should sort the same), but the ~ over an n changes the sound it makes
and is a separate letter (but alphabetically, it appears directly after
a normal n).  In German, the umlaut changes pronounciation, but I've
never seen umlauted letters referred to in alphabetical listings, just
in pronounciation guides (and in the alphabet the only "odd" letter, ß
(ss), comes directly after the s).

I could go on, but the only other diacritics I'm familiar with are
sanskrit transliterations, and they also follow the rule of matching up
with their non-diacritic equivalents (since diacritics in this case are
used to denote pronounciation modifications based on existing letters,
even if they are different letters in the original language - eg.
transliterated sanskrit has a "normal" R and an R with a . under it; the
R with the dot is actually a separate letter, but since its sound is
similar to a normal R, it's sorted just after the normal R)

-Chris