Accurately sorting Polytonic Greek paragraphs

[Janus Bahs Jacquet]

For paragraph sorting, I generally use the language-aware paragraph sorter which @Peter Kahrel made many years ago, and which mostly works well.

For Polytonic Greek, however, it fails. There is no built-in sort order for Polytonic Greek, so I’ve added my own:

0123456789 Α[ΆἈἉἊἋἌἍἎἏᾈᾉᾊᾋᾌᾍᾎᾏ]ΒΓΔΕ[ΈἘἙἚἛἜἝ]ΖΗ[ΉἨἩἪἫἬἭἮἯᾘᾙᾚᾛᾜᾝᾞᾟῊΉῌ]ΘΙ[ΊΪἸἹἺἻἼἽἾἿῘῙῚΊ]ΚΛΜΝΞΟ[ΌὈὉὊὋὌὍῸΌ]ΠΡΣΤ[ΥὙὛὝὟῨῩῪΎ]ΎΦΧΨΩ[ΏὨὩὪὫὬὭὮὯᾨᾩᾪᾫᾬᾭᾮᾯῺΏῼ]ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÆØÅ

Note the plethora of accented vowel variant in square brackets after each base vowel. As far as I understand the instructions on the page linked to above, this is how I should indicate that diacritics should be ignored.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work: all accented vowels just end up at the end of the list (in seemingly random order). If I remove the brackets, it sort-of-kind-of works, in that accented vowels are then at least ordered with the base vowel instead of at the end of the alphabet – but they’re still treated as a separate letter, so a sequence like (correctly sorted) ἑβή - ἔξα - εὐνοῖα - ἐώρων ends up as εὐνοῖα - ἐώρων - ἑβη - ἔξα.

Am I doing something wrong here, or does the script just not work properly for Polytonic Greek? And if it doesn’t, is there a better way to sort Polytonic Greek paragraphs while maintaining formatting?

[Peter Kahrel]

I'll take a look. Meanwhile, did you try Marc Autret's script?

https://www.indiscripts.com/post/2020/06/introducing-smart-sort-for-indesign-cc-cs

[Peter Kahrel · Accepted solution]

@Janus Bahs Jacquet 

The problem was that I never added the Greek diacritics. That's now fixed (the update is on the web). There's still a strange problem with some characters. Some accented lower-case upsilons and iotas aren't converted properly (yet), you may still see some mishaps there. I haven't yet figured out the correct mapping.

There's an error in your sort-order string:

[ΥὙὛὝὟῨῩῪΎ]Ύ

should be

Υ[ΥὙὛὝὟῨῩῪΎΎ]

[Janus Bahs Jacquet]

Ah, that explains it! New version tested, and I can confirm it now sorts correctly; I didn’t have any accented lowercase iotas or ypsilons (ypsila?) that didn’t work in the sample I tested on. (And good catch on the sort-order string – something must have gone awry there.)

I was not aware of Marc’s more advanced script, but I just downloaded it and that works perfectly too.