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When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

sebastiano.tronto.net

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Re: When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

#201

Post by crazygringo »

queenkjuul wrote: post #67
derriz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree. I think I could be convinced if there was a unique and universal representation for numeric values using characters. But we have so many textual representations of numeric values that I'm assuming the "mind-reading" goodness only works for a small subset. And the subset will be somewhat intuitive for developers but unlikely to be so for non-technical people. For example, does the order handle nu…

Are filenames likely to include those representations? I feel like probably not (can you even include commas in Windows filenames?) More to the point of the article--if you want things sorted by date, sort by date. I think most laypeople aren't looking at long CHAR1234_5678 filenames anyway, they're looking at thumbnails and dates.

> if you want things sorted by date, sort by date

Unfortunately it doesn't work. When I copy the files, they all get new dates in whatever random order they happened to be copied in.

Re: When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

#202

Post by sneak »

RHSeeger wrote: post #128
bapak wrote: post #119

Maybe it's just me but I don't miss this at all: Image-1.jpg Image-11.jpg Image-2.jpg The only time natural sort bit me was with nonsensical names like .jpg

I think it depends on the person. That order is exactly what I expect and want.

More importantly, it is how computers work, and how computers have worked for many decades.

Anyone with experience expects them to work this way. Trying to be clever to cater to the inexperienced only harms both groups.

Re: When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

#203

Post by crazygringo »

RHSeeger wrote: post #128
bapak wrote: post #119

Maybe it's just me but I don't miss this at all: Image-1.jpg Image-11.jpg Image-2.jpg The only time natural sort bit me was with nonsensical names like .jpg

I think it depends on the person. That order is exactly what I expect and want.

You prefer looking at photos in that weirdly particular shuffled order that isn't the order they were taken in?

Re: When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

#204

Post by SigmundA »

Our users loved when we added "natural" sort, which was pain in the ass in the db, but ultimately no big deal.

They absolutely do not care or understand the difference between alphabetical and numerical and natural, what they care about is 10 should not come before 9 in "Item 10" vs "Item 9".

Whatever pedantic argument you have that natural is not alphabetic will lose you sales, your users do not care and want numbers to make sense in sorting.

Re: When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

#205

Post by crazygringo »

sneak wrote: post #202
RHSeeger wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on the person. That order is exactly what I expect and want.

More importantly, it is how computers work , and how computers have worked for many decades . Anyone with experience expects them to work this way. Trying to be clever to cater to the inexperienced only harms both groups.

Computers have been sorting with natural sort for decades. By now, it is "how computers work".

Were you under the impression this was something new?

Re: When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

#206

Post by crazygringo »

furyofantares wrote: post #110
furyofantares wrote: post #26

Numbers aren't in the alphabet. So no, you don't mean alphabetical order.

I felt a little bad about this snark but actually, author barely understands their own use case (says they want alphabetical order but they actually want something more) and barely understands the UI they're using (says they asked for alphabetical order but none of the file managers they used says it has any such setting) and then they go on to claim this is to satisfy dumb users: > Well, apparently all these operati…

It really is world-class irony. Impressive.

Re: When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

#207

Post by f33d5173 »

crazygringo wrote: post #205
sneak wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly, it is how computers work , and how computers have worked for many decades . Anyone with experience expects them to work this way. Trying to be clever to cater to the inexperienced only harms both groups.

Computers have been sorting with natural sort for decades. By now, it is "how computers work". Were you under the impression this was something new?

I was very surprised by it when I noticed it a year or so ago. What's interesting is that when it works, eg you have a directory with numbers from 1-10, you don't really notice it. It isn't until it bites you in the ass, eg your downloads folder with a bunch long numeric strings, some in hex, where you want to find one and suddely it's not where you expect.

I used a gui software some years ago that distinguished between version sort and alphabetic sort. It would be handy to have a toggle.

Re: When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

#208

Post by seriocomic »

More fascinating for me is this discussion thread, where there's legitimate debate around the need/expectation for alphabetical sorting to match/include lexical sorting.

I'm personally in the "want lexical as part of alphabetical" - as 'photo19' should come after 'photo2' in my expectations, but the number of cases cited where this doesn't/shouldn't work is enough to justify a degree of contextual or situation awareness that most systems and interfaces simply aren't designed to cater for (file-systems vs photo-storage applications).

Re: When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

#209

Post by Avshalom »

xigoi wrote: post #132
Certhas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sort rules are simple (1). Treat any consecutive sequence of digits as a number when sorting. So for example version numbers (which must be massively more common than decimals in filenames) work correctly, and 5.9 is indeed smaller than 5.10 and the latter is not identical to 5.1 . Given that this idea goes back more than two decades, has been the default behaviour of the most used OSes for many years, with no ma…

> Treat any consecutive sequence of digits as a number when sorting. Based on this description, I have no idea how the following would be sorted: • photo.jpg • photo1.jpg • photo01.jpg • photos.jpg

1 and 0 aren't even in the alphabet so in "alphabetical order" I still wouldn't know a prior how that's sorted.

I guess?

  photo.jpg
  photo[nine].jpg
  photos.jpg
  photos[zero][one].jpg

Re: When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order”

#210

Post by quacked »

derriz wrote: post #143
Certhas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sort rules are simple (1). Treat any consecutive sequence of digits as a number when sorting. So for example version numbers (which must be massively more common than decimals in filenames) work correctly, and 5.9 is indeed smaller than 5.10 and the latter is not identical to 5.1 . Given that this idea goes back more than two decades, has been the default behaviour of the most used OSes for many years, with no ma…

> The sort rules are simple In considering the simplicity of the rule, I think you're using a developers perspective here where we automatically classify numbers and have a clear mental model of the separation between value and representation. But I'm not sure how simple it would be to explain to a non-technical user why size_5, size_10 and size_15 are in order but size_0.25, size_0.5 and size_0.75 are out-of-order.…

> I'm regularly amazed at how little non-developer/technical users complain about strange and confusing behavior.

I am a highly technical user that works with a lot of people with traditional engineering degrees but little to no software experience (except as frequent users). The answer here is that they've learned that all computer software is arcane and mysterious, and so they just accept that there will be strange patterns they have to pick up on, and that's their role as a user. They don't complain about strange and confusing behavior because they treat all the behavior as strange and confusing.

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