Putting Zürich before Århus

Mark Davis discusses the challenges and solutions related to linguistic sorting in web applications, emphasizing the importance of sorting names and other data correctly according to the user's language preferences. Previously, developers had to rely on server-side solutions to generate sort keys, which were cumbersome and inefficient. However, the new internationalization specification for ECMAScript, now implemented in browsers like Chrome, offers a comprehensive client-side solution for linguistic sorting, as well as the correct formatting of numbers, dates, and times according to locale preferences. This specification aligns with industry standards such as BCP47 and LDML and allows for better language and locale matching, even in offline web applications. The implementation of this API enables web developers to handle these tasks more effectively, ensuring that the results are appropriate for the user's language and locale, while Mark Davis, who has played a significant role in Unicode developments, shares his personal connection to Switzerland.