I have a problem with the sort order in DAB (9.3 - Windows) with the Arabic language.
I’m setting up my dictionary from LIFT.
In FLEx I’m using the sort Custom simple. The sort order is correct.
I copied the sort order from FLEx in DAB using the same sort method (Custom simple rules).
But the sort order for the headwords is not correct in my app.
What I’m doing wrong?
Thanks for your help
Have you tried to turn the Sort Method in DAB to Do not sort? You would need to check that your LIFT file was sorted as you expect. I’m not sure if Flex will output LIFT sorted.
I don’t read Arabic, so makes it hard to follow the problem.
Yes, I tried. But it does not work (the LIFT file is not sorted, only the dictionary in FLEx). I don’t read Arabic either, but we can see the sort order is incorrect. On the app screenshot, we see, on the top, the letters in the correct order. So it should list all the words starting with
then
then
and so on
Would it be possible to ask someone in the DAB dev team to have a look? Thanks
Dominique and I tested sorting in FLEx, exporting a filtered LIFT lexicon, and NOT sorting in DAB. With a new project, that seemed to work, so we presumably have a workaround.
The questions remain whether the LIFT-based sorting can modified in an existing project with an updated database, and whether the custom sorting in FLEx matches the same config in DAB.
That’s great that you found a work-around @Dominique and @Matthew_Lee. From my tests, it looks like if you export a full LIFT lexicon, the order of the elements is “random” (not sorted by lexeme, or by any of the date fields), but if you export a filtered LIFT lexicon, it exports the entries in the current display order, which is (normally) sorted by lexeme, even if you didn’t filter anything out. Does that match your understanding? Then if you choose “Do not sort” for that Writing System, DAB just lays out the entries in the vernacular index in the order that they appear in the LIFT file? I think that’s what you said, but I’m just making sure I understood.
Do you have an index in another language, like a gloss language? I assume you would leave sorting for that Writing System as “Default ordering”, so that the app presents them in a way that makes sense? Otherwise I assume DAB would lay them out in the order of the LIFT entries, which are of course sorted by the vernacular language, so that would make the order of that index appear basically random.
In this particular Arabic script case, it looks like it is ignoring the vowels (the small marks above and below the letters). That’s fairly typical for an Arabic script sort (i.e. what I might expect for a “Default ordering”), since vowels in the Arabic language are usually less important. But if you intentionally specify the sort order in DAB, as you did, copying the configuration from FLEx where it was working, then obviously DAB should use that sort order. And that doesn’t seem to be happening - maybe DAB is only just always using the “Default ordering”, unless you specify “Do not sort”, as in your workaround. I’ll try to look into it a bit, but no promises, as I have a day job… 
Thanks for your valuable input, Jeff. Yes, it seems I forgot to restore the right sort order when I did some tests. This is the reason why I had a wrong sort order in DAB with a filtered LIFT lexicon. Yes, we also have an index both in English and Arabic. The sort order for these indexes has always been working fine.
