In July 2025, John Bishop, a Toponymist working for the Cree Government in northern Quebec, reached out with an intriguing request. He was working on a Cree dictionary with syllabic headwords and wondered if SmartSort could be customized to handle Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics sorting.

“I work for the Cree Government in northern Quebec and am working on a Cree dictionary with Syllabic headwords. I would like to customize SmartSort so that it can sort in syllabics (…). Is this something you could help with?”

Cree can be shown in both syllabics and the Latin script.

The Challenge

What a fascinating territory! Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics represent a unique writing system used for languages like Cree and Inuktitut, covering Unicode blocks U+1400..U+167F and U+18B0..U+18FF. The challenge wasn't just technical—it was also linguistic and cultural.

The existing SmartSort release supported many languages, but had never ventured into syllabic writing systems. The collating sequence for Aboriginal languages wasn't well-documented in standard Unicode resources, making this a journey into uncharted waters.

Diving into this request meant exploring Unicode's Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics blocks, the Default Unicode Collation Element Table (DUCET) weights, academic resources like the conversion guides from the University of Wisconsin, and the relationship between syllabic characters and their phonetic values.

Overview of the syllabic system.

The above reference chart shows the complexity of the syllabic system, with its unique approach to representing consonant-vowel combinations and final consonants in both Western and Eastern variants.

Despite having no direct feedback mechanism from Cree language experts, the implementation relied on Unicode's standard collation weights. My approach was to:

   — Integrate Unicode blocks, i.e. add support for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (U+1400..U+167F, U+18B0..U+18FF, etc).

   — Follow DUCET standards using the Collation Element Table as the sorting foundation.

   — Include Cree and Inuktitut in the SmartSort language list.

   — Maintain flexibility and keep the system open for future tailoring based on user feedback.

The Silent Update

Here's where the story takes an interesting turn: after creating and sending the alpha version (SmartSort 1.23a) to John Bishop, there was... silence. No response, no feedback, no validation from an actual Cree language user.

Yet the work was done, the implementation seemed sound based on Unicode standards, and the feature could benefit other users working with Aboriginal languages. Hence SmartSort 1.24 has just been released with full, although experimental, Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics support—a feature born from one person's request but never validated by its intended user.

Does SmartSort do a good job with Cree? You tell me!

Hence the update to SmartSort 1.24 includes:

• Extended character support: Full coverage of Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Unicode blocks.
• New language options: Cree and Inuktitut added to the language selection menu.
• DUCET-based sorting: Reliable collation based on Unicode standards.
• Backward compatibility: All existing features remain unchanged.

The implementation leverages the existing $$.Collator.jsxlib library, extending its capabilities to handle the new character ranges while maintaining the script's performance and reliability.

This experience highlights an interesting aspect of open-source development: sometimes you build features into the void, hoping they'll find their users. The Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics support in SmartSort exists as a testament to this approach—a feature requested by one person, implemented with care and research, but released without the validation of its intended community.

Perhaps John Bishop is busy with his dictionary project. Perhaps the solution didn't meet his specific needs. Or perhaps it worked perfectly, and he simply moved on to the next challenge. In the absence of feedback, the feature remains a small bridge between Unicode standards and practical typography needs.

Looking Forward

SmartSort 1.24 is now available with Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics support. If you're working with Cree, Inuktitut, or other related languages, this update might be exactly what you need. And if you are John Bishop reading this—or anyone else working with Aboriginal languages—your feedback would be more than welcome.

Sometimes the most meaningful features are born not from market research or user surveys, but from a single email asking, “Is this possible?” The answer, as it turns out, is often yes—even when delivered into the silence of cyberspace.

• See also: How to Update/Reinstall SmartSort Properly.