XBOX 360 2567

My thinking and writing may be f***ing up, but I certainly don't recall ever suggesting that. My intentions in my hack design have been exactly the opposite. In fact, I'm not limiting my design to mere diacritical marks. Since I cannot predict new characters and how they will look, my design has to be extensible enough to allow this WITH NO CHANGES TO SOFTWARE, SPECIFICATIONS OR STORAGE.

I don't think you can sort based on specifications in place today. There is nothing that specs how to merge a Chinese list with an English list. Take a snoop in the real card catalogues in the library (if they haven't burnt it yet). People didn't agree on English merged with Engligh sorting orders. Do a test. Go ask a dozen kiddies what an alphameric sort would look like. Repeat with numeric; then with alphanumeric.

ARE YOU KIDDING????!!!! Plain ASCII was a PITA. Nobody agreed on that either. Take a look at what did they call it? ANSI-1968. Especially at the bottom where all the exceptions are spec'ed.

You are forgetting fields here. Every sort key had a field definition. grumphhh...or has the word sort changed its meaning?

Self-contained is the ONLY option. Think about reading from a distance that is chronological, not geographical.

This have to support is exacly why I threw out a separate number-character in my design.

No, it doesn't. The manner of usage is vastly different. You're thinking from the bit looking at the reader POV. I'm also thinking about the muscle contractions a reader has to do (this includes the brain muscle).

EXACTLY!!! Now you're getting it. :-))

That's because there is only one alphabet available for use. It used to be called SIXBIT alphabet. That was no good so there was an ASCII alphabet of several different flavors. It seems that the lifetime of a new alphabet is diminishing in this biz. Or are we still going through terrible birthing pains (as opposed to growing pains)?

BAH