Re: [Refdb-users] citestyle's BIBLIOSEQUENCE sorts upper and lower alpha separately

[Bruce D'A. <bda...@gm...>]

On 4/23/07, Jus...@pi... <Jus...@pi...> wrote:
> "Bruce D'Arcus" <bda...@gm...> wrote on Mon, 23 Apr 2007
> 10:34:11 -0400:
>
> > But sorting conventions vary by locale,
>
> What I meant and neglected to say is that sorting conventions are
> usually imposed by the required bibliography style, and that the
> sorting locale should thus be set by the bibliography style
> definition.

True, but sorting still depends on the name in question. If I have a
style that says sort on "last name" in English, "Mao Zedong" still
sorts on the first name, which is the family name.

> > I've come around to believing that it's easier and more
> > straightforward for people records to have an explicit sort-string
> > property, as vCard does.
>
> I would love this to be true, but is it? Does the entire world agree
> on how to sort names beginning with Van, von, ... (D'...)?

But here's the complication as I understand it. The sorting convention
of articulars is not just a question of the display locale, but of the
origin of the name itself. The last I looked into this, some European
languages would sort on the articulars, and others not.  And I presume
that they might be mixed in a bibliography list.

Note: I'm not 100% sure of this and would like to clarify, but
certainly doing simple culturally-specific name parts like first and
last is not at all international-friendly. And even family, given ,
etc. the introduces the issues of how you sort different kinds of
names.

Bruce