Murray Lesser wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

RT>If you were going to specify a collating sequence,  how would 
RT>_you_ do it?

 ML>      More or less the same as the IBM 8-bit character set 
 ML> EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code) has 
 ML> done it since the S/360 family in 1964. 

I used to have a chart around somewhere that listed that set,  but haven't
seen it for ages...

 ML> All alpha characters are contiguous, with the special 
 ML> characters having a grouping of their own, rather than being in 
 ML> several groups scattered between portions of the alphabet.

Makes sense to me.

I'd add that a simple interchange of one adjacent pair of bits should give
lexical ordering,  too.

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