Bilingual Database

[raymond]

Hello,

I am asking this question here, since on the Bookends forum, I didn't receive any answer, and I am looking for a solution:

I have created in a Mellel file in Hebrew a BE database of 179 citations. Some in English, and some are in Hebrew. I asked that the citations would be arranged according to Authors names in alphabetical order.
What I got is the following:
Citations 1-10 are in Hebrew
Citations 11-64 are in English
Citations 65-179 are in Hebrew.

My question;
Why all the Hebrew citations couldn't be arranged in one group

TIA
Raymond

[DylanMuir]

You should write to bookends support (on their website). They are very helpful and quick to respond.

This is almost definitely a bookends issue and not a Mellel issue.

DRM

[raymond]

As I mentioned at the top of my request, I addressed myself to the Mellel forum, since I know that here participate some BE users with lot of knowledge and experience in BE.
I wrote this question in the BE forum where Jon the father of BE takes part very intensively and replies personally for most problems, but for my problem he did not reply. I doubt if there is a point to address directly to him. I do not wish to disturb him in any form.
So, I hope to get a reply here.
Thank you for your assistance

[nicka]

Maybe, like me, Jon didn't understand your question when you posted it on the Bookends forum. The final line -- the actual question -- looks like this:

Why all the Hebrew citations didn't arranged by BY in one group

That didn't make sense to me.

The way you asked it here was easier to understand. So perhaps you could repost there.

[este.el.paz]

Raymond:

Whereas your question may be serious to you it's not really a serious issue as far as using BE is concerned. Jon is willing to address any and all questions regarding the actual use and function of BE. I have several databases in BE, one of them has 1400 citations. Believe me after you get to 250 citations you aren't going to be concerned that your hebrew citations are split in the list view. I would advise that you "don't worry about it;" but perhaps that won't address your feelings about this issue to the extent that you would wish it???? Possible solutions: create another database and have only hebrew citations in one and english in the other; or create two "static groups" in your database, one for english, one for hebrew. Probably in the list view of the database the groups may still be split, but when you click on one of the groups it will likely be in proper and tidy order.

As I'm saying it's not super relevant to using BE, you still have to "manually" select the citations you want to include in Mellel's "Bibliography" tab in the "wizard" (or whatever the little floating box is called) anyway to have Mel/BE create your Bibliography at the end . . . BE/Mellel doesn't just "know" what you want to include unless you tell it.

If that doesn't help you to calm down about this, just look upon it as a leadership challenge . . . BE is just testing you to see if you can handle a little pushback. Act like you don't care about what it is doing "to you" and after awhile BE will settle down and put everything in proper and tidy order . . . . Just actually use BE and see how it does what it does very, very well and your complaint will end . . . .

I'm more concerned that the new 2.9 version has failed to type letters that I've typed . . . several times . . . that is to me a serious issue . . . .

e.e.p.

[ahankinson]

I've read your question, and I still don't understand the issue. I'm not knowledgeable about multilingual contexts, so please help me understand.

If I were to guess, I would say that your citations are sorting according to the Romanization of the Hebrew letters. As far as I understand it, you can use a standard QWERTY keyboard to enter Hebrew letters, and it would "appear" as a string of ASCII letters that would make no sense if you weren't in a Hebrew language mode. For example, ".H~" might appear as a Hebrew character. The Romanized form of the orthographic variants of the letter forms is what BE is using to sort its references.

That would explain why you are getting two groups -- one sorting "pre-alphabetical" and one sorting "post-alphabetical." That said, I'm *totally* guessing here.

[jannuss]

I've read your question, and I still don't understand the issue. I'm not knowledgeable about multilingual contexts, so please help me understand.

No, that shouldn't be the case since Unicode places Latin and non-Latin characters each in their own sequence.

I'm guessing that Raymond has some special characters at the beginning of his citation . . . a space maybe

In any case, this is not a Mellel issue

Janet

[jda]

For those who were following this issue here and on our forum, the problem was a jannuss surmised, this is not a Mellel (or a Bookends) issue, the references that didn't sort the way he wanted had a space in from of the author's name.

Jon
Sonny Software

[raymond]

Thanks for all those who have tried to help me, especially to Jon.
The problem has been solved.
Raymond