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Column sorting no longer "stable"


rrob

Idea

I have conventions for note titles, tags and notebook names that leverages column sorting in List View.   I am finding a very significant change in sort behavior I think starting with this release (also I checked that this new change is still present in 6.13 beta, so no clear immediate hope for a fix). Specific example: click once on Title column header to obtain Title sort (either ascending or descending).  Click next on Tags header and all sorting, indicated and actual, vanishes (or is replaced with some indiscernible sort, and no arrowed column header).  Click Tags header again and obtain tags sorting, however, secondary sorting on Title is now lost.   The old behavior was very desirable and useful, that is that in this example, the title sort would have been preserved as a secondary sort key, evident in ranges of equal primary key (here Tags).  I think I recall from an old CS course that this property of sorting is called stability, hence my subject line.

So really there are two problems here in my opinion, likely related, the stability that used to allow secondary sorting is gone, and that clicking a second column has first the action of removing all sorting.  If this is a feature, I'm missing how so.  Seeing this on macOS 10.13 and macOS 10.12.6.

 

Update: I've been messing with this more and the problem seems to only afflict Notebook and Tags columns, both the problem that the first click on that column sends the whole view into an unsorted state (and with no sort arrow showing anywhere), and also the loss of stability, i.e., secondary key sort.  I think it's reasonable to expect that Title sort would be preserved for equal Notebooks in list view, as it used to be.  I'm surprised nobody else seems to care about this... anyone??

Thanks,

-Rob

 

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Hi.  I was never aware of any ability to sort on one column,  then another,  and have the second sort results only rearrange the order of the first column within the original sort limits..  (that sounded better in my head...) 

AFAIK it has always been the case that List view has columns that can be sorted A-Z or Z-A,  but a sort on one column has no relation to any sort upon another.  Your mileage clearly varied,  so I can only suggest that you submit a request to get an answer from Support (who we're not.  We're a mainly user-driven Forum.)  Now you;ve raised the query,  it'd be interesting if you care to share any results back here...

https://www.evernote.com/SupportLogin.action if you're a paying customer,  tweet https://twitter.com/evernotehelps if not.

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It may be related, that the first click on Tags removes all sorting, and that the secondary sorting stability "feature" is gone.  Anyway I made a simple picture of what happens.  I will submit this to support (as a paying customer), and report back.  Thanks,

-Rob

 

evernote_column_sorting.png

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I have a support ticket open on this.  They acknowledged that it's a bug and it's been escalated to the development team.   Just upgraded to Version 6.13 (455674 App Store) and the problem is still present (as you'd expect).

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4 hours ago, rrob said:

Just upgraded to Version 6.13 (455674 App Store) and the problem is still present (as you'd expect).

If you're interested in the changes addressed by this relese, there's a summary at the link below.  No mention of changes for the column sort issue

 

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On 11/2/2017 at 2:32 PM, rrob said:

 

I have a support ticket open on this.  They acknowledged that it's a bug and it's been escalated to the development team.   Just upgraded to Version 6.13 (455674 App Store) and the problem is still present (as you'd expect).

Problem still present in Version 6.13.1 (455785 Direct)

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