ISO 12199:2000

INTERNATIONAL ISO
STANDARD 12199
First edition
2000-08-01
Alphabetical ordering of multilingual
terminological and lexicographical data
represented in the Latin alphabet
Mise en ordre alphabétique des données lexicographiques et
terminologiques multilingues représentées dans l'alphabet latin
Reference number
ISO 12199:2000(E)
©
ISO 2000

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ISO 12199:2000(E)
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
Contents Page
Foreword.iv
Introduction.v
1 Scope .1
2 Normative references.1
3 Terms and definitions .2
4 Preparatory procedures.2
5 First ordering level .3
5.1 First-ordering-level values.3
5.2 First-ordering-level sequence .3
5.3 Equivalence between special Latin letters and basic letters.4
6 Second ordering level .4
6.1 Second-ordering-level values .4
6.2 Special Latin letters and letters with diacritical marks .4
7 Third ordering level .6
7.1 Third-ordering-level values .6
7.2 Ordering according to capitalization.6
8 Fourth ordering level.6
8.1 Fourth-ordering-level values.6
8.2 Ordering according to special characters .6
Annex A (normative) Word-by-word ordering.7
Annex B (informative) Special rules for lexicographical and terminological ordering.9
Annex C (informative) Ordering rules for chemical names.10
Annex D (informative) Character repertoire of the Latin alphabet .12
Annex E (informative) Languages using the Latin alphabet.19
Annex F (informative) Alphabetical sequences and character repertoires.22
Annex G (normative) Formal description of the rules of the main body of this International Standard .32
Bibliography .38
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies (ISO
member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through ISO technical
committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been established has
the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in
liaison with ISO, also take part in the work. ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical
Commission (IEC) on all matters of electrotechnical standardization.
International Standards are drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 3.
Draft International Standards adopted by the technical committees are circulated to the member bodies for voting.
Publication as an International Standard requires approval by at least 75 % of the member bodies casting a vote.
Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this International Standard may be the subject of
patent rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.
International Standard ISO 12199 was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, Terminology (principles and
coordination), Subcommittee SC 2, Layout of vocabularies.
It complements other International Standards prepared by ISO/TC 37, such as ISO 10241:1992, International
terminology standards — Preparation and layout and ISO 12200:1999, Computer applications in terminology —
Machine-readable terminology interchange format (MARTIF) — Negotiated interchange.
Annexes A and G form a normative part of this International Standard. Annexes B to F are for information only.
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
Introduction
In the development of international terminologies, both in printed form and in databases, it is essential to have
uniform and internationally recognized rules for the alphabetical ordering of terminological and lexicographical data,
to make these terminologies more easily accessible for the users. In addition, it will facilitate the interchange of
terminological and lexicographical data.
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INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO 12199:2000(E)
Alphabetical ordering of multilingual terminological and
lexicographical data represented in the Latin alphabet
1 Scope
This International Standard specifies the sequence of characters to be used in the alphabetical ordering of
multilingual terminological and lexicographical data (terms, term elements, or words) represented in the Latin
alphabet. Character sets of languages represented in the Latin alphabet are taken into account insofar as
terminological or lexicographical data have been recorded. Character sets used in internationally standardized
transliteration into Latin script are also taken into account.
The sequence of alphabetical characters given is intended for multilingual purposes only and is not intended to
affect the alphabetical order of any specific language.
The main part of this International Standard specifies letter-by-letter ordering of character strings. Normative annex A
treats word-by-word ordering, which is a widely used alternative to this system.
Informative annex B gives two additional rules that may be useful for lexicographical and terminological ordering.
Informative annex C gives ordering rules for chemical names.
Informative annex D lists the character repertoire of the Latin alphabet.
Informative annex E lists languages using the Latin alphabet.
Informative annex F gives alphabetical sequences derived from the sequence specified in this International
Standard for a number of languages that use the Latin alphabet.
Normative annex G gives a formal description of the rules laid down in the main part of this International Standard
conforming with ISO/IEC 14651.
2 Normative references
The following normative documents contain provisions which, through reference in this text, constitute provisions of
this International Standard. For dated references, subsequent amendments to, or revisions of, any of these
publications do not apply. However, parties to agreements based on this International Standard are encouraged to
investigate the possibility of applying the most recent editions of the normative documents indicated below. For
undated references, the latest edition of the normative document referred to applies. Members of ISO and IEC
maintain registers of currently valid International Standards.
ISO 1087:1990, Terminology — Vocabulary.
1)
ISO 1087-1:— , Terminology work — Vocabulary — Part 1: Theory and application.
ISO 1087-2:2000, Terminology work — Vocabulary — Part 2: Computer applications.
ISO/IEC 10646-1:1993, Information technology — Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set (UCS) — Part 1:
Architecture and Basic Multilingual Plane.
1)
ISO/IEC 14651:— , Information technology — International string ordering — Method for comparing character
strings and description of a default tailorable ordering.
______________________
1) To be published.
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
3 Terms and definitions
For definitions of terminological concepts, see ISO 1087, ISO 1087-1 and ISO 1087-2.
For the purpose of this International Standard, the following terms and definitions apply.
3.1
character
member of a set of elements used for the organization, control or representation of data
3.2
letter
character used for writing natural language, often representing a sound in the language
3.3
digit
character used to represent the numeric value, or part thereof, of a number
3.4
special character
character that is not a letter nor a digit
EXAMPLE The space character is a special character.
3.5
ligature
character resulting from the joining of two or more letters
NOTE The resulting character is, in some cases, considered a separate letter.
3.6
polygraph
two or more consecutive letters that are regarded as one letter for some purpose
NOTE A polygraph consisting of two or three letters may be referred to as a digraph or a trigraph respectively.
3.7
diacritical mark
character that is not a letter and is placed over, under, or through a letter or a combination of letters
3.8
ordering
act of bringing strings of characters into a well-defined sequence according to a string comparison specification
4 Preparatory procedures
In the process of alphabetical ordering, character strings are compared according to a set of rules. This
International Standard specifies the set of rules to be used for the ordering, but does not address the means of
selection of relevant character strings, nor any modification of the strings that may be needed for a given purpose.
Consequently, certain preparatory procedures may be needed before applying the ordering rules. Depending on
the needs in each individual case
― the relevant character strings may have to be selected, e.g. relevant terms may have to be extracted from a
corpus,
― the character strings may have to be modified, e.g. sentence-initial uppercase letters may have to be changed
to lowercase letters, plural form of words may have to be changed to singular form, or
― leading zeroes or spaces may be added e.g. in lists containing numerals.
Polygraphs are treated as sequences of separate letters.
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
An application may arrange information into several ordering fields, and determine ranking order with several
separate and independent comparisons. This International Standard only defines a single comparison for one such
field, where the field is a character-string field.
Only the characters that appear in the string and their arrangement are taken into account. Apart from the ordering
rules and passes, no other knowledge about the words in the character string is used. For example, dictionary
information or rules about language syntax, phonetics and semantics are not used.
5 First ordering level
5.1 First-ordering-level values
When comparing strings to be ordered, the first-ordering-level values of the strings shall be considered first. The
subsequent ordering-level values need to be considered only if two or more strings have identical first-ordering-
level values.
For multilingual ordering, the following rules shall be applied (see annex A for word-by-word ordering):
5.2 First-ordering-level sequence
Digits and letters have the following ordering values:
a) Digits: 0123456789
NOTE 1 Sequences of digits will be ordered from left to right as written, thus generating the following order, e.g.:110100 11
110 11112191902213.
NOTE 2 Leading zeroes may be inserted as a preparatory procedure, e.g. to generate the following order: 0001 0002 0003
0010 0011 0012 0019 0021 0100 0110 0111 0190.
b) Basic letters of the Latin alphabet:
a A b B c C d D e E fF gG hH i I j J kK l L mM nN
o O p P q Q r R sS t T uU vV wW xX yY z Z þÞ
NOTE 1 This order has been established for use in multilingual environments so as to conflict with as few individual
languages as possible. See informative annex F for examples of deviations from this sequence in some languages.
Uppercase and lowercase letters shall be treated as equivalent (see clause 7). Letters of the Latin alphabet with
diacritical marks shall be treated as equivalent to the corresponding basic Latin letters (see clause 6). Special
letters of the Latin alphabet shall be treated as equivalent to basic Latin letters according to Table 1 in 5.3 (see
clause 6).
The Turkish language distinguishes ı/I from i/İ, while other languages have the pair i/I only. To order multilingual
data including Turkish text, the i/I pair shall be expanded as follows:
1: ı/I U0131/U0049 LATIN LETTER DOTLESS I (Turkish)
2: i/I U0069/U0049 LATIN LETTER I (non-Turkish)
3: i/İ U0069/U0130 LATIN LETTER I WITH DOT ABOVE (Turkish)
It should also be noted that, for example, í (U00ED LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH ACUTE) in normal print is represented
as LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I WITH ACUTE. For the purpose of ordering, however, it shall be treated as equivalent
to i (U0069 LATIN SMALL LETTER I) on the first ordering level.
NOTE 2 Throughout this International Standard, characters are referenced as UXXXX, where X is any hexadecimal digit and
refers to the position of the character in ISO/IEC 10646-1. Character names are given as in ISO/IEC 10646-1. Most names of
Latin letters start with “LATIN SMALL LETTER …” and “LATIN CAPITAL LETTER …”. When referring to both lowercase and
uppercase letter, the name “LATIN LETTER …” is used. When there is no danger of misinterpretation, the words “LATIN LETTER”
are sometimes omitted.
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
c) Letters of other alphabets
Letters of other alphabets follow in the sequences established for each alphabet. The order of non-Latin alphabets
shall be: the Greek alphabet, the Cyrillic alphabet, other alphabets.
NOTE It is outside the scope of this International Standard to establish the sequences for alphabets other than the Latin
alphabet. The Greek alphabet has the following sequence of letters:
αΑ βΒ γΓ δ∆ εΕ ζΖ ηΗ θΘ ιΙ κΚ λΛ µΜ νΝ ξΞ
οΟ πΠρΡ σΣ τΤ υΥφΦ χΧ ψΨ ωΩ.
All other characters, e.g. punctuation marks, shall be ignored. See clause 8.
5.3 Equivalence between special Latin letters and basic letters
Special Latin letters shall be treated as equivalent to basic letters of the Latin alphabet according to Table 1.
Uppercase and lowercase letters shall be treated as equivalent.
Table 1 — Equivalence between special Latin letters and basic letters
Position Character name in ISO/IEC 10646-1 Character position for Equivalent to
lowercase / uppercase
in ISO/IEC 10646-1
01 LATIN LETTER AE U00E6 U00C6 ae
02 LATIN LETTER B WITH HOOK U0253 U0181 b
03 LATIN LETTER C WITH HOOK U0188 U0187 c
04 LATIN LETTER D WITH STROKE U0111 U0110 d
05 LATIN LETTER D WITH HOOK U0257 U018A d
d
06 LATIN LETTER ETH U00F0 U00D0
07 LATIN LETTER G WITH HOOK U0260 U0193 g
08 LATIN LETTER H WITH STROKE U0127 U0126 h
k
09 LATIN LETTER K WITH HOOK U0199 U0198
a
10 LATIN SMALL LETTER KRA U0138 k
11 LATIN LETTER L WITH STROKE U0142 U0141 l
LATIN LETTER ENG U014B U014A n
12
13 LATIN LETTER O WITH STROKE U00F8 U00D8 o
14 LATIN LIGATURE OE U0153 U0152 oe
a
LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S U00DF ss
15
16 LATIN LETTER T WITH STROKE U0167 U0166 t
a
No corresponding uppercase letter.
6 Second ordering level
6.1 Second-ordering-level values
If the comparison of two strings results in identical first-ordering-level values, second-ordering-level values shall be
applied according to 6.2.
The rule shall be applied from left to right.
6.2 Special Latin letters and letters with diacritical marks
Special Latin letters, that have been treated as equivalent to basic Latin letters according to Table 1, shall be
ordered according to the order in Table 1.
Diacritical marks shall be ordered according to Table 2.
NOTE This order has been established for multilingual environments so as to be in conflict with as few individual languages
as possible. See informative annex F for examples of deviations from this sequence in some languages.
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
Table 2 — Ordering of diacritical marks
Position Name Position for combining
diacritical mark in
ISO/IEC 10646-1
0000 none
0100 ACUTE ACCENT U0301
0200 GRAVE ACCENT U0300
0300 BREVE U0306
0301 BREVE AND ACUTE –
0302 BREVE AND GRAVE –
0310 BREVE AND HOOK ABOVE –
0311 BREVE AND TILDE –
0313 BREVE AND DOT BELOW
0315 BREVE AND COMMA BELOW –
0400 CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT U0302
0401 CIRCUMFLEX AND ACUTE –
0402 CIRCUMFLEX AND GRAVE –
0410 CIRCUMFLEX AND HOOK ABOVE –
0411 CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE –
0413 CIRCUMFLEX AND DOT BELOW –
0500 CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT BELOW U032D
0600 CARON U030C
0614 CARON AND CEDILLA –
0700 RING ABOVE U030A
0701 RING ABOVE AND ACUTE –
0800 DIAERESIS U0308
0813 DIAERESIS AND DOT BELOW –
0817 DIAERESIS AND MACRON –
0900 DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT U030B
1000 HOOK ABOVE U0309
1100 TILDE U0303
1200 DOT ABOVE U0307
1300 DOT BELOW U0323
1400 CEDILLA U0327
a
1500 COMMA ABOVE/BELOW
U0313 and U0326
1600 OGONEK U0328
1700 MACRON U0304
1713 MACRON AND DOT BELOW –
1800 MACRON BELOW U0331
1900 PRECEDED BY APOSTROPHE –
2000 FOLLOWED BY APOSTROPHE –
2100 HORN U031B
2101 HORN AND ACUTE –
2102 HORN AND GRAVE –
2110 HORN AND HOOK ABOVE –
2111 HORN AND TILDE –
2113 HORN AND DOT BELOW –
a
The position of combining comma above and below the base character.
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
7 Third ordering level
7.1 Third-ordering-level values
If the comparison of two strings results in identical first- and second-ordering-level values, third-ordering-level
values shall be applied according to 7.2.
The rule shall be applied from left to right.
7.2 Ordering according to capitalization
A lowercase letter shall be ordered before the corresponding uppercase letter. [See 5.2, item b), first paragraph
after note 1.]
NOTE The terms “lowercase letter” and “uppercase letter” are used for members of the sets “ab c …” and “AB C …”,
respectively. In character names, the naming conventions of ISO/IEC 10646-1 are used. ISO/IEC 10646-1 uses “LATIN SMALL
LETTER” and “LATIN CAPITAL LETTER”, respectively.
8 Fourth ordering level
8.1 Fourth-ordering-level values
If the comparison of two strings results in identical first-, second- and third-ordering-level values, fourth-ordering-
level values shall be applied according to 8.2.
The rule shall be applied from left to right.
8.2 Ordering according to special characters
Special characters are ordered according to the sequence of the default template of ISO/IEC 14651. For most
special characters, this is the order in which they are listed in ISO/IEC 10646-1.
NOTE In word-by-word ordering (see normative annex A), the space character and possibly other special characters may
have special functions as key separators.
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
Annex A
(normative)
Word-by-word ordering
A.1 Principles of word-by-word ordering
As noted in the scope, this International Standard specifies the letter-by-letter ordering of character strings. Word-
by-word ordering is a widely used alternative to this system. Table A.1 illustrates the difference between letter-by-
letter ordering and word-by-word ordering.
Table A.1 — Letter-by-letter and word-by-word ordering
Letter-by-letter ordering Word-by-word ordering
ad ad
adhesive ad hoc
ad hoc ad infinitum
adieu adhesive
ad infinitum adieu
adipose adipose
A.2 Multiple-key ordering
Single-key ordering is described in the main body of this International Standard. In multiple-key ordering, all the
ordering rules are applied to one key before they are applied to the next, until all the keys have been considered or
a unique sequence has been established.
NOTE One typical example of multiple-key ordering is a list of delegates to a meeting, where the first key may be the country
names, the second key may be the delegates’ last names, and the third key may be the delegates’ first names. In this example,
if a country has one delegate only, the second key (last names) will not be considered.
A.3 Word-by-word ordering as multiple-key ordering
In word-by-word ordering, space characters, and possibly also by definition other characters, are key separators.
The key-separator characters function as key separators only, and they have no position in the ordering sequence.
When the character string has been divided into a sequence of keys, the ordering rules of the main body of this
International Standard are invoked for one key at a time.
NOTE 1 In addition to the space characters, some or all punctuation marks may be defined as key separators. It may also be
useful to define some space characters as key separators, while other space characters remain special characters within a key.
The choices will depend on language(s) and type of strings to be ordered.
NOTE 2 If space characters and hyphens are defined as key separators, the title of this clause would be split into the
following keys: , where each key is contained within
< and >, and the spaces are added for increased readability.
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
A.4 Simple word-by-word ordering
If the text to be ordered using word-by-word ordering contains very few special Latin letters and diacritical marks,
the following extension to the rules in the main body of this International Standard will produce the same or nearly
the same output as the rules described in clause A.3.
On the first ordering level (see 5.2), the space character is added as the first item. Items 1, 2, and 3 in 5.2 then
become items 2, 3, and 4. The space character is not treated as a special character on the fourth ordering level
(clause 8).
NOTE Depending on the language(s) and type of strings to be ordered, it may be useful to treat even other special characters
(e.g. hyphens) in the same way as the space character.
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
Annex B
(informative)
Special rules for lexicographical and terminological ordering
B.1 Background
For lexicographical and terminological applications, it may sometimes be desirable to add additional ordering
criteria to the rules that are described in the main body of this International Standard.
The features that are described in this annex cannot easily be described in the formalism given in ISO/IEC 14651.
B.2 Position relative to baseline
2
It may be desirable to distinguish, for example, m2, m ,m for ordering purposes. If this is deemed necessary, it is
2
recommended that this be done on the third ordering level (see clause 7) combined with capitalization.
The ordering value of any given character based on its position relative to the baseline may be determined
according to Table B.1.
Table B.1 — Position relative to baseline
1 character(s) on baseline
2 character(s) above baseline, superscript character(s)
3 character(s) below baseline, subscript character(s)
B.3 Ordering according to styles
If ordering by the first through fourth ordering level does not produce a unique sequence, typographical styles may
be taken into consideration as a fifth ordering level.
Styles may be ordered according to Table B.2.
Table B.2 — Order of styles
Position Style name Example
1 roman abcdefghij
2 boldface abcdefghij
3italic abcdefghij
4 boldface-italic abcdefghij
5 others
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
Annex C
(informative)
Ordering rules for chemical names
C.1 Background
There are no universally accepted ordering rules for chemical names. The ordering rules of the main body of this
International Standard may be used, if so desired with the extension of the word-by-word ordering rules described
in annex A.
However, some indexes and databases, in particular at the Chemical Abstracts Services (CAS), use a specially
2)
designed multiple-key ordering system. The main features of this system are outlined below.
C.2 Division into three keys
C.2.1 Parent name
The first key consists of the parent name, which normally will be all roman letters and space characters, whether or
not interrupted by italic letters, Greek letters, digits or special characters (e.g. punctuation).
C.2.2 Initial locants
The second key consists of initial locants, being all characters before the first roman letter.
C.2.3 Other locants
The third key consists of all non-initial locants, being all remaining characters.
NOTE The name “2-Butanone-1,1,1-d , 3,3-dimethyl” is divided into three keys as follows: <2-> <-1,1,1-
3
d ,3,3->
3
C.3 Ordering rules within each key
The first key is ordered according to the rules of the main body of this International Standard.
In the second and third keys, the following order is used:
— letters of the Latin alphabet (which will be in italic), in the order specified in 5.2, item b);
— letter of the Greek alphabet, in the order given in 5.2, item c);
— numerals, in the order of the numeric value.
C.4 Output
Table C.1 shows ordered output from the rules that are described in this annex compared with output from the rules
of the main body of this International Standard.
_______________________
2) For further details, please consult Chemical Abstracts Services (CAS), P.O. Box 3012, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.
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ISO 12199:2000(E)
Table C.1 — Sample output
Ordered according to annex C Ordered according to general rules
Bromine fluoride (BrF ) 1-Butanone
3
Bromine fluoride (BrF ) 1-Butanone, 1-phenyl-
5
2-Butanol 2-Butanol
2-Butanol, (R)- 2-Butanol, 1-chloro-
2-Butanol, (S)- 2-Butanol, 4-(trimethylstannyl)-
2-Butanol, sodium salt, (S)- 2-Butanol, (R)-
2-Butanol, 1-chloro- 2-Butanol, (S)-
2-Butanol, 4-(trimethylstannyl)- 2-Butanol, sodium salt, (S)-
1-Butanone 2-Butanone
1-Butanone, 1-phenyl- 2-Butanone, 1-(dimethylamino)-3,3-dimethyl-
2-Butanone 2-Butanone-1,1,1-d
3
2-Butanone, O-methyloxime 2-Butanone-1,1,1-d , 3,3-dimethyl-
3
2-Butanone, oxime 2-Butanone, 3-(4-acetylphenyl)-
2-Butanone, polymer with formaldehyde 2-Butanone, 3-ethoxy-1,1-dihydroxy-
2-
...