A Study on Collation of Languages from Developing Asia
A Study on Collation of Languages from Developing Asia Sarmad Hussain Nadir Durrani Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences www.nu.edu.pk www.idrc.ca Published by Center for Research in Urdu Language Processing National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences Lahore, Pakistan Copyrights © International Development Research Center, Canada Printed by Walayatsons, Pakistan ISBN: 978-969-8961-03-9 This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada, administered through the Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP), National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES), Pakistan. ii Preface Defining collation, or what is normally termed as alphabetical order or less frequently as lexicographic order, is one of the first few requirements for enabling computing in any language, second only to encoding, keyboard and fonts. It is because of this critical dependence of computing on collation that its definition is included within the locale of a language. Collation of all written languages are defined in their dictionaries, developed over centuries, and are thus very representative of cultural tradition. However, though it is well understood in these cultures, it is not always thoroughly documented or well understood in the context of existing character encodings, especially the Unicode. Collation is a complex phenomenon, dependent on three factors: script, language and encoding. These factors interact in a complicated fashion to uniquely define the collation sequence for each language. This volume aims to address the complex algorithms needed for sorting out the words in sequence for a subset of the languages.
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