On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 09:20, Bruce D'Arcus wrote: > So going back to the non-standard (in the english-speaking world) > examples Karen raised that largely prompted this discussion: > > On Jan 23, 2004, at 10:49 AM, Karen Coyle wrote: > > > Note that a nonSort element is not always a full word and > > doesn't always get spaces, such as in 17th and 18th century works in > > French where the apostrophe was not used: Lhistoire.... In this case, > > the nonSort is "L" and there are no spaces; or in Arabic, where the > > nonSort is "al-", as in: al-ʻArabah al-dhahabīyah lā taṣʻad. > > I wonder if this would work? > > <titleInfo xml:lang="fr"> > <nonSort>L</nonSort> > <title>historie...</title> > </titleInfo> I don't think language alone is enough. "Le" which would also be lang="fr" would need a space. How would you distinguish between "L" and "Le" unless you maintained a list of all possible articles in your stylesheets (like you mention)? This seems like a lot of unnecessary complexity. Treating as attribute with space, as others have mentioned, greatly simplifies this: <title nonSort="L">...</title> <title nonSort="Le ">...</title> To me, the space is content, just as spaces between words are content, not just a matter of display (which is what I would want a stylesheet to handle). Kevin -- Kevin S. Clarke <[log in to unmask]> Lane Medical Library, Stanford University