Re: test-org-table/sort-lines: Failing test on macOS

[Max Nikulin]

On 23/11/2022 17:37, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> Max Nikulin writes:
> > Strings to sort are passed either through `identity' or
> > through `downcase'.
>
> Thanks for the pointer.
> Now, I am getting more confused though.
> Do we even need to use `string-collate-lessp' then?

I think we do because sort result is presented to humans.

(setq lst '("semana" "señor" "sepia"))
(sort lst #'string-lessp) ;         => ("semana" "sepia" "señor")
(sort lst #'string-collate-lessp) ; => ("semana" "señor" "sepia")

> Eli even argued that `string-collate-lessp' is strictly worse compared
> to more predictable approach. See
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=59275#40

In this particular case Eli may assume that e.g. list is a elisp 
structure, not a kind of text formatting. In general, I am quite 
pessimistic concerning quality of locales support in Emacs while Eli may 
have rather different point of view.

> Do you remember any cases when users actually demanded locale-specific
> sorting?

I think, users too often face poor locale support in various 
applications, so they are not surprised when see incorrect results. In 
some sense such results are consistent (erroneous in the same way).

Formatting of numbers in Emacs is the extreme case of consistency. For 
the sake of reliably reading/writing of numbers from/to files or network 
it is impossible to present a number accordingly to the current locale. 
An exception is en_US that has some dedicated code in calc.

I believe, it is silly to adhere to a common denominator and to not use 
`string-collate-lessp' just because it is unavailable in some environments.

> However, I feel a bit lost about what to do on Org side.
> We can put a disclaimer in the manual and all that, but it still feels
> too complex.

My current suggestion is to provide a fallback to `downcase' in the code 
and to explain in the manual that runtime environments (OSes) are not 
equal and quality of locale support varies. Emacs heavily depends on 
libc in this area.

> > However I am afraid of compatibility shims after
> >
> > d3a9c424b 2022-08-16 17:15:27 +0800 Ihor Radchenko: org-encode-time:
> > Refactor into top-level `defmacro'
>
> What do you refer to?

Implementation must be chosen at compile (or load) time. Due to some 
issues with native compiling it does not work. For string comparison 
runtime performance penalty may be higher than for timestamp processing.

> The question is what can be done and, more importantly, how much effort
> will it take to implement and maintain an alternative.

Effort is significant however e.g. browsers have their own 
implementation of Unicode-related stuff. There is ICU library, but Eli 
is against it because Emacs already has partial implementation of 
Unicode and it would mean duplication of character database.