SPIonic in MS Excel

[Stephen]

I'm using Excel to keep a list of words that I'm learning. I'd like to have Excel sort the list alphabetically, and wonder if anyone has already worked out how to do this. I think I'd write a macro to generate a number to sort on (this could be different for different fonts), but don't want to reinvent the wheel.

[Paul]

Hi Stephen,

Are you trying to sort betacode (ascii) or unicode?

Cordially,

Paul

[Stephen]

Paul,

What I had in mind was betacode. I had started off using the Athenian font (from MS, I think), but since it doesn't seem to support accents, I was thinking of switching to SPIonic, using betacode - based on the recommendations in this forum. (My word list isn't very long yet, so I can switch without too much effort.)

I was sorting the Athenian font with a simple formula that looked at just the first two letters of a word. I'd need something more elaborate for betacode, skipping over the characters used to represent accents.

Steve

[Paul]

Hi Stephen,

Hmm...I guess I should have read your subject line.

It's entirely plausible that my AGTM (which you are beta-testing) contains 'normalization' code that could be used to strip out betacode diacriticals. I'd have to check.

But in any event, removing the diacrits via a script is a straightforward matter. I know next to nothing about Excel. Does its macro facility let you call a javascript function?

Cordially,

Paul

[Stephen]

Excel uses Visual Basic for its macros - I don't know if it handles javascript too. It shouldn't be hard to write a VB routine that skips over the diacritics. I was hoping that someone had already thought this through.

What I'd be using this for is to make up my own personal dictionary of just those words I'm learning and still need to be able to look up quickly or review. Right now I have a hundred or so, and I'd like an easy way to keep them in order as I add new ones.

[Paul]

If, like JavaScript, VBS supports regular expressions, then it should be a walk in the park.

Cordially,

Paul