| Summary: | Natural order sort is unpredictable; need option to disable it | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | [Applications] dolphin | Reporter: | Felix <info> |
| Component: | general | Assignee: | Peter Penz <peter.penz19> |
| Status: | RESOLVED FIXED | ||
| Severity: | wishlist | CC: | bugs, bugzilla, denis.spir, doc.evans, icuric, jhutsche, kamikazow, kde-2011.08, kdebugs.99.urgwurz, m.debruijne, manolis, moz, peter.mueller_1955 |
| Priority: | NOR | ||
| Version: | 16.12.2 | ||
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Platform: | unspecified | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Latest Commit: | Version Fixed In: | ||
| Sentry Crash Report: | |||
| Attachments: |
Current sorting in Dolphin on top. Expected sorting in Dolphin below.
Correct sorting (Dolphin V1.3, KDE 4.3) |
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Description
Felix
2008-08-26 21:40:04 UTC
*** Bug 195004 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** I would like to second the "option to disable it" idea. This kind of sorting is wildly unpredictable and extremely confusing to me (at least in some cases). While the idea behind natural order sorting is a nice one, the algorithm seems to need some work. I've just run into one more example where "natural order" basically means "random": a folder full of flickr filenames. Flickr filenames have the form "ddddddddd_hhhhhhhhh_suffix" where "d" are decimal digits and "h" are hex digits. This seems to confuse the hell out of natural order sort, and basically the files appear randomized and I can't find anything. Please, please, add an option to turn this "feature" off. @Felix: The report contains two separate issues. The issue mentioned in comment #3 (-> the handling of special characters) is a duplicate of bug 181211. AFAIK there is no official definition of the term "natural sort order" - in the scope of KDE KStringHandler::naturalCompare() means that numbers are handled in a special way. Here it would be possible to add an option in Dolphin to turn it off. However the sorting of strings (and parts of the string) which contain no numbers are delegated to a local aware comparing of Qt (-> the strings from comment #3 are sorted by Qt). Qt delegates this to glibc (see http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=124174284926086&w=2 for details) where a (in my opinion) wrong sorting is done. *** Bug 179399 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** To try to be a bit more positive about this bug, since nothing seems to be happening with it the way it is currently presented to the developers: maybe it could be rephrased as a positive request to allow the user the (global) capability to have items presented in POSIX sort order? *** Bug 202372 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** I absolutely support comments #2, #3 and #6, but in the manner that "natural order" should be the option. Don't forget that all basics for software are well defined and understandable semantics, nice features can be based on this but not contrariwise. Please change the severity back to normal (at least). See screenshot/attachment for current behavior. You cannot consider normal sorting a feature request for a file manager. Right? B.T.W. I love Dolphin, but it makes it quite difficult to find back files. Created attachment 36136 [details]
Current sorting in Dolphin on top. Expected sorting in Dolphin below.
Forgot to mention that this bug is still valid in KDE 4.3.0 (bug is registered for version KDE 4.1.0) @Michiel (in reply to comment #10): Thanks for the screenshot, but I cannot reproduce this buggy behavior (see the attached screenshot using Dolphin for KDE 4.3). The order in your screenshot is definitely wrong and has nothing to do with "natural sorting". Can somebody else reproduce the behavior Michiel shows in the screenshot? Created attachment 36137 [details]
Correct sorting (Dolphin V1.3, KDE 4.3)
@Michiel: I found the reason for your bug. It's a general issue in combination with the "Show in Groups" functionality. Items in the group "Others" are sorted in a wrong manner (see bug 173027) -> the issue is not related to "natural sorting". I'll try to fix bug 173027 ASAP. (In reply to comment #14) > @Michiel: I found the reason for your bug. It's a general issue in combination > with the "Show in Groups" functionality. Items in the group "Others" are sorted > in a wrong manner (see bug 173027) -> the issue is not related to "natural > sorting". > > I'll try to fix bug 173027 ASAP. --- Hi Peter, I'm sorry for my comment on the wrong bug number. If you can fix bug 173027 then that would be fantastic. I have quite a lot of other files like the example I gave you and I would love to use Dolphin for these files. Thank you so much! Best regards, Michiel. I think there should be option to disable natural sort ordering. Problems: it ignores characters like # _ and -. I used trick of begining file name with # or _, so it is always first in directory. Now this doesn't work. In my Mp3 folder I have directory for each album, and I have directory "# Playlists". There is about 300 albums, so I want to quickly find my folder with playlists. But I can't any more. It is burried down there with folders starting with P. Ignoring characters gets uglier. In one folder I keep all mp3s which don't belong to any album. This is sample from that folder: Film - a blah.mp3 Film - b blah.mp3 Filmska muzika - a blah.mp3 Filmska muzika - b blah.mp3 Film - x blah.mp3 Film - y blah.mp3 I figured this is because it ignores " - " between atrist name and song name. To me this is very wrong. If I want to select all songs from artist "Film", I can't do it with one simple mouse move. I have to ctrl+click, or do it in two parts. In this sample, artist "Filmska muzika" has only two songs, but what if it has 30 songs. Than I would not even see that I didn't select all songs from artist "Film". That is bad. It could lead to accidental data loss. There are more examples. My photo collection is organized into folders named something like this: 200901 - Stuff from home <- various photos taken during january 20090114 - Trip to somewhere 20090121 - Birthday party of someone With natural ordering my folder "200901 - Stuff from home" is no longer listed with other folders from january 2009. Defense of natural ordering is this example: Image 1.jpg Image 2.jpg Image 10.jpg but I think this is not very realistic. My digital camera (and every that I saw) will produce something more similar to this: Image 000000001.jpg Image 000000002.jpg Image 000000010.jpg so there is no need for natural sorting. I searched web and I can't belive there is no option to disable this behavior. I read bug 179399 and bug 169883. I also read http://dolphin.kde.org/philosophy.html and http://sourcefrog.net/projects/natsort/ as someone sugested. One bug report you discarded as "not Target User Group". I think that I am your user target group. By Dolphin philosopy I am "Simon": * using computers last 14 years * employed in software developer company for last 5 years * advanced Windows XP user * Linux newbie - during college I was using some Unix and Linux systems, but this is my first Linux instalation in last 7 years. I installed openSuse 11.1 one month ago. Another reason behind natural sorting is "other systems has it". I don't know about MacOS, but on WindowsXP there is option to disable it. That is all I am asking: option to disable this behavior. It doesn't need to have GUI. I am perfectly happy with editing some property file. What bothers me most with this issue is Open/Save file dialogs. If I dont'n like Dolphin, I can find another file manager, but what will I do with Open/Save dialogs? In past 14 yers I learned all this little tricks of file handling, and now, you are breaking it without even giving option for old behavior. What I am supoused to do do? Rename all existing folders and files or forget about KDE? P.S. I registered in this tracking system just because of this issue, and spend whole evening writing this report so please reconsider your opinion. Thanks Ivan for your detailed input. There are already quite a lot votes and reasoning for this wish and I'll provide an option to disable natural sorting until KDE 4.4. The option will be visible in the UI (no hidden option) and I'll also take care that it will be accessible in the file dialog. What I don't plan to offer is to have natural sort order and traditional sort order in parallel for different directories, so this will be just a global option (but I think this has not been requested anyhow by anyone). One technical input: The ignoring of the characters -, _ and # has nothing to do with "natural sorting" in the sense as it has been implemented in kdelibs. It is an issue in Qt related to language aware comparing (see http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=124174284926086&w=2 for details). As turning off the natural sorting will also turn off language aware sorting this issue will also disappear. I've just submitted a patch for review: http://reviewboard.kde.org/r/1350 A short update: The patch to fix this issue will be submitted on Monday the 31th of August (as changes in kdelibs are required, I've to wait until this date). *** Bug 205271 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** And also related seem Bug 197415 and Bug 201101. *** Bug 201101 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** *** Bug 197415 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** SVN commit 1017534 by ppenz: Allow to turn off the natural sorting globally (see http://reviewboard.kde.org/r/1350). BUG: 169883 M +11 -0 kdeui/kernel/kglobalsettings.cpp M +24 -1 kdeui/kernel/kglobalsettings.h M +44 -14 kfile/kdirsortfilterproxymodel.cpp M +5 -1 kfile/kdirsortfilterproxymodel.h WebSVN link: http://websvn.kde.org/?view=rev&revision=1017534 SVN commit 1017536 by ppenz: allow to turn off natural sorting CCBUG: 169883 M +13 -1 behaviorsettingspage.cpp M +1 -0 behaviorsettingspage.h WebSVN link: http://websvn.kde.org/?view=rev&revision=1017536 Here http://reviewboard.kde.org/r/1350/ you are talking about a sorting order of image 10.jpg image 11.jpg image 1.jpg image 2.jpg when "natural" sorting is turned off. But shouldn't that be image 1.jpg image 10.jpg image 11.jpg image 2.jpg ? At least that's what I expect. Thank you Peter! @Janet: you are right and it is done as you expect :-) Thanks a lot! I'm a little bit confused. My bug 201101 was marked as duplicate of this here. In the other bug I requested that Dolphin should sort text.txt text2.txt instead of the current sorting text2.txt text.txt Now I read that this bug here is about sorting files as image 1.jpg image 10.jpg image 11.jpg image 2.jpg But that's not at all what I requested. I didn't request a way to disable natural sorting, I requested a fix to natural sorting. So why was my request marked as dupe? @Markus: Sorry, this was my fault. I've reopened your wish. *** Bug 207051 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** I'm assuming we will be able to disable this on a per-folder basis, right? Some places it's useful, some places not. (In reply to comment #17) > Thanks Ivan for your detailed input. There are already quite a lot votes and > reasoning for this wish and I'll provide an option to disable natural sorting > until KDE 4.4. The option will be visible in the UI (no hidden option) and I'll > also take care that it will be accessible in the file dialog. What I don't plan > to offer is to have natural sort order and traditional sort order in parallel > for different directories, so this will be just a global option (but I think > this has not been requested anyhow by anyone). > > One technical input: The ignoring of the characters -, _ and # has nothing to > do with "natural sorting" in the sense as it has been implemented in kdelibs. > It is an issue in Qt related to language aware comparing (see > http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=124174284926086&w=2 for details). As > turning off the natural sorting will also turn off language aware sorting this > issue will also disappear. Thank you for this decision. Denis *** Bug 217911 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** |