Multilingual Sorting Defaults

The companion plugin NavigatorLabels ships with a small, intentional list of articles and elisions that are ignored during alphabetical sorting. These defaults reflect the way real people write across several major languages, and they help keep index pages calm, predictable, and culturally aware.

The list includes:

• English: the, an
• French elisions: l’, d’, qu’
• Portuguese: a, as, o, os, um, uma, uns, umas
• Spanish: el, la, los, las, un, una, unos, unas

These are not meant to be exhaustive. They are simply the most common, stable forms that improve sorting for multilingual wikis without overwhelming the configuration.

• Clarity — Titles like A Casa, The Journey, El Camino, and L’Été sort under C, J, C, and É, where readers expect them.
• Multilingual awareness — Many wikis blend English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French content. The defaults reflect this reality.
• Discoverability — Seeing these examples in the Admin panel signals that the plugin supports more than one language.
• Flexibility — Administrators can add or remove terms at any time. The list is fully configurable.

NavigatorLabels removes a leading article only when it appears at the very start of a title and is followed by:

• whitespace
• punctuation
• or, in the case of French elisions, a letter

This ensures that:

• L’Été sorts under É
• D’Amour sorts under A
• A‑Casa, A.Casa, and A: Casa all behave consistently

You can edit the list in:

Admin → Configuration → NavigatorLabels 
→ Articles to ignore when sorting

The field accepts a comma‑separated list of terms.
The plugin is Unicode‑aware and supports both ' and ’ for elisions.

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