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OSX Sorting - Power Feature or Turkey?
Authored by: EatingPie on Jan 10, '02 02:29:08PM

Unfortunately, OSX uses a different sorting algorithm than OS9. I used special invisible characters to arrange my OS9 apple menu (and would have done so for the Locations menu as well), but no more. Special characters---such as spaces, embedded returns, option-8 (black dot) and other option characters, get ignored in OSX.

I found these special characters optimal for sorting because they did not look like characters, so they created a more "natural" delineation between items (and using an "0" instead of "O" just seems klunky to me).

But now I use either a numbering scheme or lettering scheme, separate from the names. So my Location Menu would look like this:

1) Work
2) Home
3) Airport
4) Airport DMZ

Of course, embedding spaces and carriage-returns could be considered just as kludgey. It looks better (IMHO) in the long run, but it's no simple task slamming a carriage return into the beginning of your names in OS9---it can only be accomplished using cut/paste AFAIK.

Be that as it may, I believe that OS9 and OSX should both at the very least use use the SAME sorting algorithm for Menus, file lists, and whatnot. Or even an option in OSX to switch the sorting algorithm. This to me is the real issue.



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