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What sort order does address book use?

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  • Last reply by Matt

AnotherUser
AnotherUser
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I'm trying to be able to sort things "after" the alphabet in a standard address book "sort by name" sort order. So aA to zZ then other stuff. In a standard ASCII sort, ~ would work - but that's been changed in Thunderbird.

So far I've been trying to find out what comes after "Z" in the sort order, but have been unable to do so. It's not following ANY standard sort order that I've been able to determine.

It's sorting 0xF7 (÷) in front of 0x5A (Z). It's even sorting Unicode U+FEFC *before* U+005A in an "ascending" order??

Was the standard sort order hacked so that anything that isn't alphabetical comes first, which means that if I want to have something sort after "Z" I HAVE to use zz or zzz instead of what works in every other program I use? Even ~ sorts before the alphabet, yet even in standard ASCII it sorts after.

Anyone know of an add-on that fixes this "helpful" hack and gives me a predictable, dependable, and above all documented sort order?

I'm trying to be able to sort things "after" the alphabet in a standard address book "sort by name" sort order. So aA to zZ then other stuff. In a standard ASCII sort, ~ would work - but that's been changed in Thunderbird. So far I've been trying to find out what comes after "Z" in the sort order, but have been unable to do so. It's not following ANY standard sort order that I've been able to determine. It's sorting 0xF7 (÷) in front of 0x5A (Z). It's even sorting Unicode U+FEFC *before* U+005A in an "ascending" order?? Was the standard sort order hacked so that anything that isn't alphabetical comes first, which means that if I want to have something sort after "Z" I HAVE to use zz or zzz instead of what works in every other program I use? Even ~ sorts before the alphabet, yet even in standard ASCII it sorts after. Anyone know of an add-on that fixes this "helpful" hack and gives me a predictable, dependable, and above all documented sort order?

Chosen solution

Alphabetical sorts have nothing to do with base values in the unicode set.

The US National Information Standards Organization publish this document on alphabetical sorting. www.niso.org/publications/tr/tr03.pdf

Or the Unicode Technical Standard #10 contains a specification for sorting unicode. http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/

These both place punctuation before the alphabetic characters as far as I can see.

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Matt
Matt
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Chosen Solution

Alphabetical sorts have nothing to do with base values in the unicode set.

The US National Information Standards Organization publish this document on alphabetical sorting. www.niso.org/publications/tr/tr03.pdf

Or the Unicode Technical Standard #10 contains a specification for sorting unicode. http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/

These both place punctuation before the alphabetic characters as far as I can see.

AnotherUser
AnotherUser Question owner
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I think my only comment at this point can be "my, that escalated quickly!!".

Thanks for the pointers and information. Unfortunately, I'm now lost in too much mostly incomprehensible information. However, the tr03.pdf doc you provided I think had the answer.

If I understand it correctly, this (new to me) sorting mechanism means that nothing comes after Z any more? (based on the PDF file you gave me, part 3.0 intro, order of characters). Is that correct?

Actually, I think I'd consider this "solved", or at least "answered".

Thank you.

Matt
Matt
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I think your right, based on my reading of the PDF.

It escalated because I have always seen alphabetical sorts sort periods etc first so did not see your examples as being in my experience. I therefore had to research the subject. , and it is only reasonable to provide source information as my assumptions are not the same thing.