[Lexicog] Sort order problem

[Ron Moe]

David's suggestion (below) is sometimes the only way to get a database to sort in a desired order. For instance in some Bantu languages we want to sort nouns by their citation form which includes an inflectional prefix (e.g. muntu [from mu- 'CLASS 1' + ntu 'person']). But we want to sort verbs by their stem form, ignoring the inflectional prefix in the citation form (e.g. kwona [from ku- 'INFINITIVE' + on 'see' + -a 'FINAL VOWEL']). So muntu sorts under M and kwona sorts under O. There is no easy way to achieve this result without setting up a sort field in which you would place 'muntu' and 'ona':

\lx ntu
\lc muntu
\sort muntu

\lx on
\lc kwona
\sort ona

We then sort on the \sort field when we export the file for printing.

So when all else fails, set up a sort field and tweak it until you get the desired result.

Ron Moe

On Thu, 9 Mar 2006 10:58:32 -0500
 "David Frank" <david_frank at sil.org> wrote:
> from David Frank:
> 
> I'm afraid I don't have a lot of experience with Shoebox/Toolbox, but I 
> would have expected a computer program like this to automatically delete any 
> trailing spaces for every field. Does the program not do that? It is a very 
> simple and standard thing to do. You shouldn't have to do that manually, or 
> do your own programming.
> 
> Surely Shoebox/Toolbox uses the space the way it does in sorting not because 
> of natural ASCII sort order or because of trailing spaces at the end of a 
> field, but because that is how the programmers thought that most people 
> would want entries sorted. But you should be able to specify your preferred 
> sort order. I will leave it up to someone else to say how spaces can be 
> ignored completely.
> 
> I still find it helpful to have a "sort key" field for each entry, whereby 
> the lexical entry is converted according to rules into a sort key, and the 
> sort key is used for sorting. I haven't tried doing that with 
> Shoebox/Toolbox, though. 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 



 
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