Can I configure Letter headings based on the lexeme when citation forms include a prefix?

[David Rowbory]

I have a dictionary of a noun class language which uses noun class prefixes. We're sorting according to the lexeme, which is without the prefix. So we have used the citation form for the version to be printed. Sorting by lexeme yet displaying headword works fine for the sort but we get lots of letter headings like this, since the letter headings are based on the citation form, not on the lexeme. 

Instead of this:

E e

eãã

I i

iaai

U u

uakpaa 

uara

A a

ãrŋa

aãrŋi orɛm

B b

ba

E e

ebã

I would like this:

A a

eãã

iaai

uakpaa 

uara

ãrŋa

aãrŋi orɛm

B b

ba

ebã

But I can't find any way to achieve this other than removing letter headings and inserting the appropriate ones manually. Can anyone tell me if I'm missing something?

David Rowbory

[Jeff Heath]

I think Greg Trihus needs to take note of this. This is a very similar issue to what we had with a combined Roman and Arabic script dictionary. When we wanted to print an Arabic version of the dictionary, even though I could sort and format the data the way I wanted it, I could not get the Letter Headers to cooperate - they stayed in Roman script, and jumped all around similar to what you see, A a, I i, E e, A a, E e, etc. The only solution we found was to bump the Arabic script form up to the first Writing System in the database, and then the Letter Headers would follow that Writing System. But that's not going to help you, because the lexeme form is not a separate WS for you, just a separate field.

What I think that means is that the Letter Headers NEED to be extracted from and follow the alphabet of the primary sort order of the alphabet view. There was some reason why Greg was saying this would be difficult (which I can't remember right off hand), but it seems to me that this is a good example of why they need to make it happen. Taking a step back, it makes a lot of sense: If you sort a dictionary by a particular field, the Letter Headers need to follow the Writing System of that field. Otherwise you get all sorts of weird results.

[Paul Nelson]

We're talking through the user requirements and will be looking at a way to have the header letters separate than the first letter of the word.

This will come sometime in the future after we get the 9.0 version out.

Best regards,

Paul Nelson

On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 4:19 AM, Jeff Heath <jeff_...@sil.org> wrote:

I think Greg Trihus needs to take note of this. This is a very similar issue to what we had with a combined Roman and Arabic script dictionary. When we wanted to print an Arabic version of the dictionary, even though I could sort and format the data the way I wanted it, I could not get the Letter Headers to cooperate - they stayed in Roman script, and jumped all around similar to what you see, A a, I i, E e, A a, E e, etc. The only solution we found was to bump the Arabic script form up to the first Writing System in the database, and then the Letter Headers would follow that Writing System. But that's not going to help you, because the lexeme form is not a separate WS for you, just a separate field.

What I think that means is that the Letter Headers NEED to be extracted from and follow the alphabet of the primary sort order of the alphabet view. There was some reason why Greg was saying this would be difficult (which I can't remember right off hand), but it seems to me that this is a good example of why they need to make it happen. Taking a step back, it makes a lot of sense: If you sort a dictionary by a particular field, the Letter Headers need to follow the Writing System of that field. Otherwise you get all sorts of weird results.

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