[Lexicog] Sorting

[David Frank]

John Koontz --

I've learned one term from you -- sorting handle -- and now another one:
fold point. But an automatic way of doing this "folding" was not what we
were interested in. For our purposes in working on a dictionary of St.
Lucian Creole, whenever we had a phrase, we had a judgment call to make, to
determine which was the most salient word in the phrase, and use that as the
basis for sorting. We could adjust the alphabetic key in the database record
so that it sorted on the right word in the phrase.

Back when I was doing automated sorting, I had a sort routine I had written
that sorted on the nonprinting alphabetic key rather than the headword.
Coming up with a programming routine for sorting on something other than the
first field in a record is not too difficult.

I bet there are programs available for sorting on any specified field in a
set of records. If anyone needs such a program, let that fact be known and I
bet there are subscribers to this list who can tell us where to find them.

I don't know either whether Shoebox (or Toolbox) can sort on something other
than the headword field in a dictionary database. I also don't know whether
sorting can be turned on and off. In my brief, ill-fated encounter with
Shoebox, the whole database was sorted according to the key word and I
didn't know how to turn it off. I bet somebody could tell us.

I use mailmerge format rather than backslash codes, and as you pointed out,
you can put your data into a Word table to sort it and then convert it back
to mailmerge format. I've done that.

-- David Frank




Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     lexicographylist-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/