Re: library for unicode collation in C for texi2any?

[Werner LEMBERG]

>> [...] Neither collation corresponds to Unicode codepoints.
>
> That's exactly what we should not do.

I strongly disagree.

> People who read German don't necessarily live in Germany, and
> Texinfo is not a general-purpose system for typesetting documents,
> it is a system for writing software documentation.

What you describe is certainly valid for a function index, say.
However, a concept index – which is an essential part of any
documentation IMHO – that doesn't sort as expected is at the border of
being useless.

> Besides, which German are you talking about?  There are several
> German-based locales, each one with its own local tailoring.

It doesn't matter.  There are zillions of German computer books that
come with an index, and such books *are* read in all German-speaking
countries and elsewhere, irrespective of a fine-tuned locale used for
the exact index order.  *This* part can be easily standardized by
making Texinfo support exactly one German locale ('de').

> So consistency in Texinfo is IMNSHO more important that fine-tuning
> the order to a specific locale and language.

What good for is this consistency if it is extremely user-unfriendly?
What exactly is the problem if, say, an MS compilation produces a
slightly different sorting order in the index?  Just add a sentence to
the build instructions and tell the people what to expect.


    Werner