numbered force sorting in Translation Manager
AElfwine Mischler
Barry Campbell
Sent: 14 April 2026 07:50
To: SKYIndexUsers <SkyInd...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [SKYIndexUsers] numbered force sorting in Translation Manager
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Deborah Patton
FORCE SORTING LOCATORS (THE FIVE-DIGIT NUMBER)
It is possible to force sort a locator with Hidden Formatting just as you would main entry text. Let's say you want to force a sequence of non-paginated plates to follow the preceding page, that is, to emulate this type of page sequence: "236, Plate 1, Plate 2,...Plate 19, Plate 20, 237".
For a particular heading, your locator list might be "33, 119, 215, 295" so you'd want your Plate 2 to follow page 215. So you enter as the locator "236Plate 2" and format "236" as Hidden text. This should work because now "236" is the first number, and Sky scans left-to-right and identify it as the page number.
Try this, however, and you'll notice several things will go wrong. Because the leading number is Hidden text, Sky will bypass it and identify the unhidden "2" as the page number—the "2" will become the primary part of the sort key (meaning it will come before the hidden text that is added to the locator). The result with unhidden "2" will be "Plate 2, 33, 119, 215, 295".
That's easily fixed, though, you just format the "2" as Ignore text so it won't be sorted: "236Plate 2". But now Sky puts Plate 2 at the end of the list, "33, 119, 215, 295, Plate 2", and the reason for this is not at all obvious.
Internally, Sky converts all page numbers to five digits to sort them. So you see "33, 119, 215, 295", but Sky actually sees "00033, 00119, 00215, 00295". When Sky sees the leading 236 in Hidden formatting, it sees it as text and does not do the five digit conversion. The result of this sort is "00033, 00119, 00215, 00295, 236". So, to properly force Sky to sort it as page number 236, you must do the conversion manually and add the extra digits. Enter the locator as "00236Plate 2", with "00236" Hidden and "2" Ignored. You'll get the proper sequence "33, 119, 215, Plate 2, 295".
This will work fine in most instances. However, there's one more twist. Let's say you have two plates in this sequence, "33, 119, 215, Plate 2, Plate 5, 295". If you properly format the locators, remember that the plate numbers 2 and 5 will be in Ignore formatting. So this is what Sky will see when it sorts the locators: "00033, 00119, 00215, 00236Plate, 00236Plate, 00295". The two plates will be identical since the plate numbers are Ignored can't be used for sorting. They will sort randomly and might or might not be correct. To fully force the sort, you need to add a hidden non-numeric character, usually a letter, somewhere in the page 236 suffix. So you'd use "00236Plate a2, 00236Plate b5" with the letters (a and b) Hidden and the numbers (2 and 5) Ignored. Then Sky would see this internally as "00033, 00119, 00215, 00236Plate a, 00236Plate b, 00295" and would sort correctly.
A much easier way to force sort the plates is to format the entire locator as ignore and add another number after the page. So Plate 2 would be designed as 0023602Plate 2. This works because when Sky scans left-to-right for the page number, it stops after five digits. The characters that follow become part of the suffix no matter what they are. The suffix for this locator would be interpreted as "02Plate 2".
This is especially helpful if you want to force the plates to the beginning or end of the locator list. To force them at the beginning you'd use 0000002Plate 2, 0000003Plate 3, etc. (all on page 00000). For the end you'd use 9999902Plate 2, 9999903Plate 3, etc. (all on page 99999). Remember: for this to work there should be no unformatted text in the locator. All of the sort key should be hidden; all of the displayed locator should be ignored.
A few other tips: in some cases if you have only hidden and ignore text, the ignore text doesn't display. To fix this put a space between the hidden and ignore text. Also, when you create sort keys Sky may not immediately sort them, so you need to do an Index > Resort to get the correct order.
Remember earlier when we wanted the plates to sort at the end of the list? The solution offered was to enable a section and enter the Input Delimiter before the plate number, "Plate:2". This forces Sky to group "Plate" locators together at the end, and orders them using the plate number as the page number.
AElfwine Mischler
Jochen Fassbender
name: hospitality. If a sorting system has redundancy to insert enough
new units, it has good hospitality.
If, as in AElfwine's case, there seems to be no need for hospitality,
two digits might suffice after all: 01 to 09, 10, 11, 12.
Jochen
Am 14.04.2026 um 09:53 schrieb Barry Campbell:
> Way way back in the early days of computer programming line numbers were
> used.
> It was normally assumed that extra lines would be needed. Therefore they
> would be numbered 10, 20, 30, 40 etc.
> Regarding sorting in indexing software the length of the number is
> important. You need to decide at the outset on 3 or 4 digits.
> 0010
> 0020
> 0030
> would be my recommendation.
> Later you can add 0015, 0013 etc. without having to adjust earlier entries.
> Barry Campbell
> www.indexbase.co.uk
> *From:* skyind...@googlegroups.com <skyind...@googlegroups.com>
> *To:* SKYIndexUsers <SkyInd...@googlegroups.com>
> *Subject:* [SKYIndexUsers] numbered force sorting in Translation Manager
> number of items. This is for an index of original sources. Items that
> are to be Main Heads were sorting correctly until I added some so that
> the total was more than 9. In my mind these numbers should be read in
> this order:
>
> 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 010, 011, 012. (01 is Hebrew Bible,
> 02 is Deuterocanonical Books, ... 05 is New Testament, ... 07 is
> Qur'an, ... 010 is Qur'an Commentaries) (I'm reading them as "zero
> one" ... "zero ten" ... "zero twelve".)
>
> But Sky was sorting them this way:
> 010, 011, 012, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09 (Thus putting Qur'an
> Commentaries, Biographies of the Prophet, and Medieval Writers before
> the Hebrew Bible)
>
> Obviously my brain and the computer's do not think along the same lines.
> I added a zero at the beginning of 01 – 09, so I have 001, 002, 003,
> 004, 005, 006, 007, 008, 009, 010, 011, 012, and now they sort correctly.
>
> Can someone explain why that works so that I can code properly in the
> future?
>
> Merci schön.
>
>
> Ælfwine Mischler
> Time zone: UTC +2
>
> Personal email: aelfwine...@gmail.com
> Business email: aelf...@mischlereditorial.com
> <mailto:aelf...@mischlereditorial.com>
> Website: www.MischlerEditorial.com <http://www.MischlerEditorial.com>
>
>
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Jochen Fassbender
Deborah.
Force-sorting to the beginning or end can also sometimes be used in
journal indexing if there is indexable matter on the front and back
covers as well as on the inside covers. In this case I'm using fc and
ifc to force-sort to the beginning and ibc and bc to sort to the end.
Jochen
>> Business email: aelf...@mischlereditorial.com
>> <mailto:aelf...@mischlereditorial.com>
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>>
>>
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Barry Campbell
Sent: 14 April 2026 13:36
To: Barry Campbell <barry.c...@indexbase.co.uk>; AElfwine Mischler <aelfwine...@gmail.com>; SKYIndexUsers <skyind...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SKYIndexUsers] numbered force sorting in Translation Manager
Jochen Fassbender
indexed his own books by using paragraph numbers as locators. During the
writing process he was able to insert new paragraphs with new numbers in
between existing paragraphs by extending the respective paragraph number
by a decimal with enough hospitality, e.g. 190.5 between 190 and 191!
Am 14.04.2026 um 15:12 schrieb Barry Campbell:
> It was used when computer programs were written on punched cards.
> You could modify a function without having to recreate the entire deck.
> The numbers were also quite useful if the deck was dropped!
> *From:* Jochen Fassbender <j...@indexetera.de>
> *Sent:* 14 April 2026 13:36
> *To:* Barry Campbell <barry.c...@indexbase.co.uk>; AElfwine Mischler
> <aelfwine...@gmail.com>; SKYIndexUsers
> <skyind...@googlegroups.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [SKYIndexUsers] numbered force sorting in Translation
> Thanks, Barry, for pointing out this technique which actually has a
> name: hospitality. If a sorting system has redundancy to insert enough
> new units, it has good hospitality.
>
> If, as in AElfwine's case, there seems to be no need for hospitality,
> two digits might suffice after all: 01 to 09, 10, 11, 12.
>
> Jochen
>
>
>
> Am 14.04.2026 um 09:53 schrieb Barry Campbell:
>> Way way back in the early days of computer programming line numbers were
>> used.
>> It was normally assumed that extra lines would be needed. Therefore they
>> would be numbered 10, 20, 30, 40 etc.
>> Regarding sorting in indexing software the length of the number is
>> important. You need to decide at the outset on 3 or 4 digits.
>> 0010
>> 0020
>> 0030
>> would be my recommendation.
>> Later you can add 0015, 0013 etc. without having to adjust earlier entries.
>> Barry Campbell
>> <mailto:aelf...@mischlereditorial.com
> <mailto:aelf...@mischlereditorial.com>>
>> American Society for Indexing (ASI)
>>
>>
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Iris Ailin-Pyzik
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