Sorting notation

[Richard Wordingham]

On Wed, 26 Feb 2014 05:34:43 +0100
Philippe Verdy <verdy_p at wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> 2014-02-26 1:08 GMT+01:00 Richard Wordingham <
> richard.wordingham at ntlworld.com>:

> > Compared
> > with how it might have been, Thai collation is extremely computer
> > friendly.

> The "computer friendly" feautre of Thai is basically for its
> rendering (not part of this topic), I'm not sure this is really true
> when discussing about collations.

You just swap the preposed vowels with the immediately following
consonant (which can be done by a contraction), and then it's a
straightforward sort of a system having characters with a secondary
weight.  You don't need to know anything more about the structure
of Thai words.  However, the first Thai-Thai dictionary had a very
different collation order - see
http://www.sealang.net/dictionary/bradley/theraphan1991lexicography.htm .
I think that order needs a very large collation element table.  It may
well be beyond the capability of the UCA - the description I cited
barely hints at the problems.

Richard.