GNU bug report logs - #46240
Sorting order of read-char-by-name

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Message #32 received at 46240 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Juri Linkov <juri <at> linkov.net>
Cc: 46240 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#46240: Sorting order of read-char-by-name
Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2021 20:44:47 +0200

> From: Juri Linkov <juri <at> linkov.net>
> Cc: 46240 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 02 Feb 2021 19:13:13 +0200
> 
> > This has 2 disadvantages:
> >
> >   . the user needs to know the order of characters within a script
> >     he/she doesn't necessarily read
> 
> In this case usually the names of characters of an unknown script
> say nothing too, so sorting them by their names doesn't help much.

It isn't black and white.  For example, I'm familiar with quite a few
scripts and their characters, but have no idea about the alphabetical
order of most of them, with the exception of only two or three (end
even there I don't always remember the order of every character).

> >   . the user needs to know the order _between_ scripts, if the
> >     candidates include characters from different Unicode blocks
> 
> IMHO, this is not a disadvantage, but an advantage, because
> it helps to group the matched characters by their Unicode ranges.

Think of a case when there are more than 2 or three scripts involved.
You will have them take several window-fulls, and it could then be a
problem to find the script you are looking for.  This is similar to
having a directory with many files whose names use several scripts:
when these files are sorted alphabetically, you may not immediately
know whether file names that belong to some script are close to the
beginning or end of the list, because the relative ordering of scripts
in Unicode codepoint order is not necessarily something we remember.
(And then there are some scripts that use more than a single Unicode
block.)

> > If the user doesn't know this order, he/she might be unable to find
> > the required character quickly, if the list of candidates is long
> > enough.
> 
> I never rely on the current sorting alphabetically by names.
> When the list of candidates is long, I need to use isearch
> to search in the necessary block whose characters are scattered
> currently in almost random order.

Well, I guess there are also people like you, then.  So maybe we need
this to be an opt-in behavior.

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