sort and collating sequence

Hi All,

I recently scoured the xsl-list digest in search of information about how
the several xsl:sort implementations construe
the notion of a 'collating sequence'.  My own observation is that xsl:sort
(msxml3 at least) does a kind of 'semantic sorting'.
For example, the values:

aaa
bbb
ccc
AAA
BBB
CCC

sorted order="ascending" data-type="text" are presented as:

aaa
AAA
bbb
BBB
ccc
CCC

I work at a company that knows a little about sorting and I find this
sequence odd. Shouldn't it be:

AAA
BBB
CCC
aaa
bbb
ccc

To put a fine point on it, isn't the ascending sequence in UTF-8:

x'414141'
x'424242'
x'434343'
x'616161'
x'626262'
x'636363'

??

This behavior seems so wrong to me, yet it is so unremarked in the digest
that I feel I must be missing something huge. Can anyone shed any light on
the correctness of this behavior? Is it unique to
msxml3? Can one use xsl:sort to produce what seems to me the proper
sequence?

Thank you.

-Paul



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