GTK Sorting Inconsistency

GTK development has always bordered on a Cubism perspective. Sorting is an example.

With the file chooser dialog, there are two options to configure sorting, which are stored in gtkfilechooser.ini:

    SortColumn=name
    SortOrder=ascending

In GTK 3 the options are stored in dconf.

As Porky Pig would say, that’s all folks.

Yet use a GTK base file manager, such as Caja or Nemo. An additional option of sorting directories first is available.

Despite the similarity in these configurations, the two tools present information differently.

The GTK file chooser will sort like this:

1. Hidden directories
2. Not hidden directories
3. Hidden files
4. Not hidden files

The “ascending” sort order is old-fashioned ASCII and is therefore case sensitive. Within the Hidden directories, the directories using upper case are sorted before the lower case. Then the same with the transition to the non hidden directories.

Open the file manager. The non upper case directories are sorted before the lower case directories and then non hidden directories are sorted before the hidden.

The problem is not which is the correct order but the lack of consistency.

This is confusing to anybody, let alone non technical users.

This is classic WTF.

Year of the Linux Desktop anyone?

Posted: February 12, 2016 Category: Usability Tagged: General, GTK

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