[mythtv] "A", "An", and "The" for sorting - ticket 3048

[Stuart Morgan]

On Tuesday 6 February 2007 12:38, Chris Hamilton wrote:
> > On 2/6/07, David Härdeman <david at hardeman.nu> wrote:
> >> Most people who use my MythTV box just find the
> >> "almost-alphabetically-sorted-except-in-a-few-cases" sorting confusing.
> >
> > Yes. I don't really care what the scheme is, so long as I know what it is
> > (and it's easy to remember). I think I would prefer simply sorting
> > without removing "A", "An" or "The".
>
> I would prefer it to be configurable.  In fact, my preference is to
> remove the prefixes and then *not* put them back in front, but rather
> leave them at the right hand side (ie: "The Show" -> "Show, The").

Which area are you referring to? The programme finder already behaves this 
way.

On the subject as a whole I have to be honest and say I couldn't really care, 
I'd rather remove the sorting completely than put in the work to make it work 
for everyone. There are other more important areas which need work.

It's already been pointed out that 'An' is a common German word and so it's 
obvious that some locale specific implementation is needed if the sorting 
stays. Now from a design point of view, it would be best if this wasn't 
hard-coded but rather made external and handled by translators. There is an 
argument for creating locale config files, which would sit in the l18n 
directory. It would allow translators to define the default settings for 
their region, e.g. Date/Time formats, Articles (The, An, A etc) and 
primary/secondary languages. These options would be cached in the database, 
but making changes and adding new locales wouldn't require recompiling.

If an English user wants French articles, then they can opt to edit the locale 
config.

What we want to avoid is adding yet more settings and settings screens, 
especially for settings which few people would use.
-- 
Stuart Morgan