[Tshwanelex-l] Sort configuration: how to handle digraphs and trigraphs?

[David Joffe]

Hi Menan,

There is a way to do it, but it is a bit 'technical' ... hope to 
reply later and explain, but quite busy right now.

 - David


On 25 Apr 2012 at 10:11, Menan du Plessis wrote:

From:	Menan du Plessis <menanduple at fastmail.fm>
To:	"tshwanelex-l" <tshwanelex-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Date sent:	Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:11:22 +0200
Subject:	[Tshwanelex-l] Sort configuration: how to handle digraphs and
	trigraphs?

> 
> Dear fellow lexicographers,
> This is a quick postscript to my earlier query. I have thought of something that might solve the 
> problem, even if it is rather inelegant. 
> I was thinking to do most of the sorting on the 'first pass', with phonemic affricates, aspirated 
> segments and the variously expanded clicks all being treated as individual members of the 
> basic alphabet. l could use spare letters, punctutation marks and other symbols to stand as 
> placeholders for those sounds that are represented by 'polygraph symbols' such as ts or !kx', 
> and it would be easy enough to specify the ordering of these single symbol placeholders using 
> the 'move up' or 'move down' buttons. The 'second pass' could then proceed to look at the 
> vowels as usual.
> The only problem now is to specify the letter strings that need to be recognized as the values 
> for the placeholders. As I understand it, the dialogue box allows the user to specify a list of 
> various single elements that may be identified with a given symbol (e.g. upper and lower case 
> forms). My question is: Is there some way of using punctuation within this list to indicate that a 
> string of symbols should be treated as a single entity for purposes of the sort?
> Hope I have managed to explain this clearly enough.
> Best wishes,
> Menan