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

Post by messe » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:28 PM UTC

SkiFire13 wrote: post #68

armchairhacker wrote: post #29

I agree with Microsoft/Google/KDE's order. The author's situation is extremely rare, and the situation where someone wants "10" to be before "9" is far more common. Moreover, desktops don't label this sorting "alphabetical" (E: and it would really be "lexicographic"*), they label it "by name" (an informal criteria), so technically they're not lying. > I miss the time when computers did what you told them to, instead…

> and the situation where someone wants "10" to be before "9" is far more common. I guess you mean "after"? Otherwise it seems to me you're agreeing with OP. > desktops don't label this sorting "alphabetical" (E: and it would really be "lexicographic"*), they label it "by name" (an informal criteria), so technically they're not lying. FYI the more formal name for the "by name" order is "natural sort order".

Post by BeFlatXIII » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #40

This is reminding me of the whole "Worse is better" essay and debate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27916370 The author wants the "worse" sort, one based on ASCII/Unicode codepoints, without any intelligence for numbers that 99% of GUI users want. For their purposes, they've assumed something about the implementation, to the point that a convenience feature is actually a misfeature for them. But the author her…

Post by cubefox » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:34 PM UTC

t-3 wrote: post #72

cubefox wrote: post #61

By the way, there seems to be a "standard" way to sort strings: > Unicode Technical Report #10 also specifies the Default Unicode Collation Element Table (DUCET). This data file specifies a default collation ordering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_collation_algorithm I assume this mainly aims at giving a reasonable compromise between the different dictionary and phone book sorting rules of various languages (…

> I assume this also puts "Alice2" before "Alice10". It doesn't (per https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/#Non-Goals ): > 1.9.2 Non-Goals > > The Default Unicode Collation Element Table (DUCET) explicitly does not provide for the following features: > [ ... ] > Numeric formatting: numbers composed of a string of digits or other numerics will not necessarily sort in numerical order.

Post by mulmen » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:37 PM UTC

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.

Post by coldtea » Sun, Sep 28, 2025, 5:43 PM UTC

derriz wrote: post #60

armchairhacker wrote: post #29

I agree with Microsoft/Google/KDE's order. The author's situation is extremely rare, and the situation where someone wants "10" to be before "9" is far more common. Moreover, desktops don't label this sorting "alphabetical" (E: and it would really be "lexicographic"*), they label it "by name" (an informal criteria), so technically they're not lying. > I miss the time when computers did what you told them to, instead…

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…