Sorting Question

[MJB]

Hi,

Jaikoz is a very impressive program! I’m just beginning to learn its features so please forgive me if this is obvious but I don’t understand why the sorting is working the way it does in the following:

As you can see, rows 21 - 37 are for Al DiMeola’s Greatest Hits Album. The first song listed, row 21 is Track number 9. This is how it came up when I sorted on Artist in the edit pane

I next tried sorting first by the Track number, then sorting on artist, then on album (all in the edit window) and the result came out the same.

I copied the artist and album from row 22 to 21 and typed 9 into the track number but this did not change the sort.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,
-Mike

[paultaylor]

Jaikoz does not support mutiple column sorting, the default order is by row number which is the order the files are loaded which is operating system dependent but usually alphabetically.

In your example you have sorted by Artist which is what is displayed, when two songs have the same value for artist they the sorted by row number. I think that is a sensible default, but would would be good is if you could then sort by a second column such as trackno.

This is a long standing issue, previously I could see no way to mutiple column sorting but I shold take another look at it, if you have an idea on how you see the UI working please let me know.

[MJB]

Hi Paul,

I’m not a programmer (anymore) but would this work?

First, a definition of terms:

Original Sort = Sort where row number is the starting sequence (as it works today)

Incremental Sort = Sort based on the results of a prior sort.

Assumption:

Keep things simple by having the user sort a single column at a time.

Create a new temporary or hidden column (temp_sort). After the first sort, sequentially number temp_sort 1 through n.

If the user selects the option “sort results”, start with the records sequenced by the temp_sort column otherwise perform the sort as you do today.

After every sort, re-sequence the temp_sort column. This would allow the user to continue to perform incremental sorts. In my original example, If I were to first sort on Track number, then incrementally sort on artist, then again incrementally sort on album, the results should give me my albums in correct track sequence (assuming album name is unique to the artist and there is only one disc).

My apologies for wasting your time if I misunderstood your question or I’m missing a very basic element of programming here.

[paultaylor]

Actually that sounds good, but how do we differentiate between an incremental sort (i.e .i have already sorted by artist, now sort by trackno) to a new sort (sort by trackno diaregarding existing sort)

[dkoh]

Here’s pretty much my suggestion for everything:

Shift+click

Actually, that’s not quite a complete idea. Would it always sort ascending when you append sorts? Would things break if the first column is descending and you shift+clicked another column? What if the first column didn’t matter, but all subsequent sorts were ascending? And whats the limit on sorts? 3, 4… 10? :shock: (or does it even matter?)

[MJB]

The points that dkoh raised could be addressed via a separate, incremental sorting dialog box or page where the user could choose the column for the next sort (drop down box or radio button), then choose between ascending or descending then press a sort button. A reset button option could be included that returns everything to row order.

You could provide multiple iterations of the above, along with a sort sequence ID too. For example, In iteration 1 I choose sort ascending on Track No. In iteration2 I choose ascending on Album, and in the third iteration I choose descending on Artist. All three of these could be separate sections of the dialog box.

There doesn’t need to be an undo if there’s a user option to reset to row sequence.

[dkoh]

After thinking about this a bit, what about:

[click Col1] Sort Col1 Ascending
[shift+click Col2] Col1 Ascending and Col2 Ascending
[shift+click Col2] Col1 Ascending and Col2 Descending
[shift+click Col3] Col1 Ascending, Col2 Descending, & Col3 Ascending

Clicking any other header by itself clears the other sorts and sorts only that column. Essentially, the behavior would stay like how it is now, just with the previous sorts.

I’m no programmer, just throwing ideas out there, so I have no idea how much is involved here. I like this idea though.

BTW, Clicking the Record Number (Row) header already resets to original row order as it is.