Sorting Russian Word Lists in MS Word

[Jim Tonn]

Tony,
   The Timesse Russ font uses an encoding system known as CP1251 (or Windows
1251) to organize its Cyrillic letters. In this encoding system, Cyrillic
takes the place of lesser-used characters such as accented Latin vowels
(which you see when you switch back to a standard font). As far as Word is
concerned, the text you are producing is made of these lesser-used
characters and not of Cyrillic letters, and it attempts to sort based on its
idea of how multilingual accented characters should be "alphabetized." In
some cases Word's idea of sorting accented characters happens to coincide
with the ordering of their Cyrillic counterparts, which is why you
experience partially correct sorting with this font.
   My web site, www.convertcyrillic.com, can convert CP1251 to Unicode,
which should be correctly sorted by Word. Unfortunately, although accented
Cyrillic characters can be represented in Unicode, Fingertip's way of
representing them is not standardized, so they cannot be easily converted.
However, if this particular list of terms does not use accented characters,
you should be able to convert and sort with few problems.

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of Vanchu, Anthony J.
(JSC-AH)[TTI]
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 6:16 PM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Sorting Russian Word Lists in MS Word

Michael,

That was all good advice, and I think it helped me to figure out what my
problem is (and that it's ultimately unsolvable with what I have).

I'm creating a vocabulary for a Chekhov short story.  For my students, I
used a font program that enables stress marks (Fingertip Software's
Russian Keyboard).  When I try to change back from their font (Timesse
Russ) to something like Times New Roman, some of the characters come up
as jibberish.  I suspect that this is what's gumming up the works.  I'm
too far into this project as it is to change things around, so it looks
like I'll be slogging my way through the list to straighten things up.

Apparently, if I buy another product and convert everything to Unicode,
it might work.  But I'm probably not going to do that just for this
project.

BTW, I never knew about the feature you mentioned.  Thanks for pointing
that out!

Best,
Tony



-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of Brewer, Michael
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 4:43 PM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Sorting Russian Word Lists in MS Word

Tony, 

Have you used the Word Help and followed the directions for adding other
languages for the sort function? (type "sort" into help and it will come
up). 

mb


Michael Brewer
Slavic Studies, German Studies & Media Arts Librarian University of
Arizona Library A210 1510 E. University P.O. Box 210055 Tucson, AZ 85721
Voice: 520.307.2771
Fax: 520.621.9733
brewerm at u.library.arizona.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU] On Behalf Of Vanchu, Anthony J.
(JSC-AH)[TTI]
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 2:29 PM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: [SEELANGS] Sorting Russian Word Lists in MS Word

A question for the SEELANGS community that's on a somewhat more earthly
and concrete level than many recent postings...

I've been trying to use the sort function in MS Word (on a PC) for list
of Russian words.

The results I achieve are helpful, but not optimal.  What happens is
that I get a sort that is *generally* correct, but which also contains
numerous errors.  Typically, there are a bunch of words that get put at
the top of the list which are totally out of place (and in no particular
order).  The rest of the words are by and large sorted correctly at
least by first letter, usually more.  But I also end up with far too
many words within each of these groups that are out of place, meaning
that I have to sort these words manually.

Ideally, I would like for this tool to work as well in Russian as it
does in English.

Has anyone else encountered this problem and, if so, do you know of a
solution or workaround?  I tried cutting and pasting the list into MS
Excel, thinking that the sort function might work better there, but
alas, the results are the same.

Thanks,
Tony Vanchu

Dr. Anthony J. Vanchu
Director, JSC Language Education Center
TechTrans International, Inc.
NASA Johnson Space Center
Houston, TX
Phone:  (281) 483-0644
Fax:  (281) 483-4050

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