Set LC_COLLATE to de_DE_phoneb

Frank Jagusch <frank@jagusch-online.de> wrote:

The german phone book order has the windows language setting
de_DE_phoneb an the value 00010407 in the registry. Unfortunately I was
not able to find a corresponding string for the LC_COLLATE setting.

I cannot find any resources for "de_DE_phoneb" in Web. What is the true
name for it? Locale names should be in <Country>_<Language>.<CodePage>
format on Windows. If you can find the counterpart name for it, you can
initialize PostgreSQL DB with the locale, and <CodePage> or UTF-8 encoding.

Background: I moved an old application from a borland paradox database
to postgesql. The speed gain is great but the sorting order isn't the
usual to the user. I can't change the order by clauses of the select
statements because they are generated by the borland database engine.

I'm afraid of "de_DE_phoneb" is an original locale implementation in your
old database. If so, PostgreSQL cannot support it because postgres depends
on locale libraries in each platform. (i.e., msvcrt on Windows)

Regards,
---
Takahiro Itagaki
NTT Open Source Software Center

Frank Jagusch <frank@jagusch-online.de> wrote:

"de_DE_phoneb" is the name of an alternative sorting in german (only a
few languages have alternate sorting). You may find some information
when you search the MSDN for "de_DE_phoneb", i.e.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-en/library/ms404373.aspx
These alternate sorting is supported by the OS, but I don't know how it
is supported in the msvcrt.

Hmmm, I found "de-DE_phoneb" in MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd374060
but setlocale("de-DE_phoneb") always fails at least on my machine.

The doc says "de-DE_phoneb" is a locale name for
MAKELCID(MAKELANGID(LANG_GERMAN, SUBLANG_GERMAN), SORT_GERMAN_PHONE_BOOK).
Some of native Win32 APIs could accept the locale and sort-order
combination, but setlocale() in CRT seems to reject it.

So, you could use the locale if you find a setlocale-compatible name of
"de-DE_phoneb". Or, you cannot use it, unless we modify PostgreSQL to
use Win32 locale functions instead of standard libc ones -- but it is
hardly acceptable.

Regards,
---
Takahiro Itagaki
NTT Open Source Software Center

Am Donnerstag, den 08.04.2010, 10:27 +0900 schrieb Takahiro Itagaki:

Frank Jagusch <frank@jagusch-online.de> wrote:

"de_DE_phoneb" is the name of an alternative sorting in german (only a
few languages have alternate sorting). You may find some information
when you search the MSDN for "de_DE_phoneb", i.e.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-en/library/ms404373.aspx
These alternate sorting is supported by the OS, but I don't know how it
is supported in the msvcrt.

Hmmm, I found "de-DE_phoneb" in MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd374060
but setlocale("de-DE_phoneb") always fails at least on my machine.

Is it a windows box? May be you need to install some german language
support?

The doc says "de-DE_phoneb" is a locale name for
MAKELCID(MAKELANGID(LANG_GERMAN, SUBLANG_GERMAN), SORT_GERMAN_PHONE_BOOK).
Some of native Win32 APIs could accept the locale and sort-order
combination, but setlocale() in CRT seems to reject it.

So, you could use the locale if you find a setlocale-compatible name of
"de-DE_phoneb".

As far as I investigated I didn't find one. I hoped to find such a
setlocale-compatible name or a hint where to search here...

Or, you cannot use it, unless we modify PostgreSQL to
use Win32 locale functions instead of standard libc ones -- but it is
hardly acceptable.

I thought PostgreSQL is using OS specific functions for sorting (means
Win32 functions?). This sounds not good for my request. So I ask the
whole audience: Are others out there asking for a support for the
alternate sort orders? Is it worth to discuss further in this direction?

Here an other Idea: Is there a way to define a custom collation for a
database?

Thanks so far,
Frank Jagusch
--
http://www.jagusch-online.de/frank

On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 06:59:44PM +0200, Frank Jagusch wrote:

I thought PostgreSQL is using OS specific functions for sorting (means
Win32 functions?). This sounds not good for my request. So I ask the
whole audience: Are others out there asking for a support for the
alternate sort orders? Is it worth to discuss further in this direction?

Here an other Idea: Is there a way to define a custom collation for a
database?

Over the years there have been various options suggested and various
patches posted but they never make it, for various reasons.

The only concerted effort I know of is the PostgreSQL ICU patch which
is in FreeBSD ports, to work around the fact that it's C library
doesn't handle UTF-8 collation at all.

http://people.freebsd.org/~girgen/postgresql-icu/README.html

I doubt it's been tested for Windows, but if it works it will give you
alternate sort orders and even custom sort orders.

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/