Unable to sort bibliography with "scands"

[boris]

Authors like, e.g., Goldberg/Schiffrin/Östman (three records) sort correctly in list view ( "Ö" last). In the bibliography they are sorted as Goldberg/Östman/Schiffrin.
Is there a way to sort the bibliography so that Scandinavian and German characters are sorted correctly?

[ozean]

Is there a way to sort the bibliography so that Scandinavian and German characters are sorted correctly?

I guess you are aware that correctly can actually mean both versions, depending on the standard according to which you mean to sort (the German phonebook for example would use the latter sorting).

Nonetheless, the sorting should be consistent. In Leopard, but I think also in Tiger, you can adjust the sorting order in the Language section of System Preferences. I guess Bookends should either comply to that setting or offer a setting of its own… (in any case you might have to switch settings, depending on where you want to publish - a Norwegian publisher would want your former order, a German one the latter…)

In any case I have the feeling that this issue has been discussed here before, but right now I feel too lazy to search for it.

[Jon]

Hi,

ozean is right. You have set the list view to sort by ASCII values. If you set it to sort by Unicode values the Ö should sort before the S. The bibliography sort is always by Unicode value.

Jon
Sonny Software

[Reiner]

@ozean: After reading your post I first realized the systemwide sorting preferences. But I can't find any further information what exactly is meant with the different sorting rules and which behaviour is ruled by this setting (not in the Help, not by using Google, not in Apfelwiki.de). Do you know where I can get further information on that?

If an answer would be too much off-topic here you can answer by pm in the Mellel forum or by mail. Thank you very much.

[ozean]

No, but I also wondered about how and where these settings do actually apply.

[boris]

I have tried all possible (perhaps except the right) alternatives and still cannot make the bibliography put names starting with Å, Ä, or Ö after Z. One reason might be that I use an English system with a Swedish keyboard. Scands are entered as high ascii (I assume)?
I can live with this problem until a solution is found. I simply cut the references starting with scands and put them at the end.
Positive comment: I can without problems include cyrillic references. For them final sorting has to be made by hand which is quite natural. One thing which slows me down is that when I switch keyboard settings from Swedish to Russian (flag at top right of screen) they return to Swedish every time I move to the next entry field.

[ozean]

The bibliography sort is always by Unicode value.

Do you think this could (or should) be changed? As is the case with boris, some people need different sorting orders… I guess this is what boris’ question is directed at.

[Jon]

AFAIK, unicode sorts are correct (i.e. ASCII sorts are definitely incorrect). BTW, Bookends uses the Mac OS X ICU (unicode) tool to handle sorting.

Jon
Sonny Software

[boris]

I want to celebrate eighteen months of waiting with a reposting of the original question:
"Authors like, e.g., Goldberg/Schiffrin/Östman (three records) sort correctly in list view ( "Ö" last). In the bibliography they are sorted as Goldberg/Östman/Schiffrin.
The last character in the Swedish alphabet. Is there a way to sort the bibliography so that Scandinavian and German characters are sorted correctly?"
In case the initial character in Östman is distorted it is O with two dots on top of it.
By "correctly" I mean that the bibliography should be sorted in the same way as the list view.
Perhaps something has happened without me noticing?

I want to add that Bookends is very good. I have had no reason to ask anything on this forum for a long time.

[Jon]

Hi,

This is difficult for a number of reasons. One is that the setting for how the strings are compared in the database is a property of the data itself (how it is indexed). At the request of many users, we use a setting where diacritics are ignored, so that searching for "Schutz" will find "Schütz". Second, sort orders can vary between languages (locales). Bookends is meant to be used with any language, and in fact it is common to mix many languages in the same database.

Jon
Sonny Software

[boris]

The real reason for posting the question is that I don't find anything to REALLY complain about and wanted to show that I am still alive. I have no problems with "postsorting" a bibliography any way I want.
I tried to persuade my daughters to use Bookends. The younger one went to Stanford. Both still use BibTeX. The older one writes everything using LaTeX. Who said that progress is based on the fact that each generation is more advanced than the previous?
Now I will stay away until I find the REALLY BIG problem.