Tag/Notebook sort order no longer match across OSes

[chimericdream 9]

Prior to the recent major update of EN on Mac, notebooks and tags were sorted identically on both Windows and OS X. Unfortunately, now I get a completely different order (almost reversed) looking at my Mac vs my PC.

A little more info:

I preface some tag and notebook names with special characters ('!', '.', '_', etc) to group categories of items while keeping things with the same prefix sorted. However, with the recent update on Mac, the special characters now sort differently than before. This means that I have items sorting "incorrectly" (based on my personal system).

To me, this is a bug. Folders and files outside Evernote still sort the same on both OS X and Windows, so I don't believe there is a fundamental difference in the OSes. The only variable that changed in the equation, as far as I can tell, is the Evernote update.

Any suggestions on how to get tags and notebooks sorting correctly again?

[Jackolicious 808]

That would be a bug. Would you mind posting screenshots of both clients to illustrate the differences?

[chimericdream 9]

Sorry for the delay. Looking into it more, it appears that only the underscore is being sorted incorrectly. The sort order on Windows (and formerly Mac as well) was "!" "." "@" "_", and the new sort order on Mac appears to be "_" "!" "." "@". Attaching a couple of screenshots from both OSes.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/mQzcqhXxdIZFZFQynCu9JpGBW9g_tHo5ud_4Z3cKZMQ?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/yw-w8Pb74cW04A7xUDkE2pGBW9g_tHo5ud_4Z3cKZMQ?feat=directlink

[pgdahl 133]

Speaking of which: I previously reported that the alphabetic sort order in Danish is wrong (the last letter 'Å' being sorted after 'A'). It's as annoying as it is embarrassing.

Edit: I forgot the cross platform bit: The Windows client does it properly, whereas the iOS version gets it wrong too.

[danrochman 1]

+1 / BUMP / Whatever.

 

I happen to also be one of those nerds that proudly uses prefixes (usually an underscore, and sometimes an exclamation mark) to force things to the top of an "alphabetically" sorted list, such as Notes by Title.  So I, too, am now seeing the sort order difference between the Mac and Win versions of EN.  Please fix.  In this day and age (I just love saying that, sorry), there really should never be an arbitrary/unexpected collation difference across product versions/platforms.

 

If I'm being really nerdy, I'd seriously encourage you to have an *explicit* collation, at least in the online help somewhere, for each character set that you support.  Users (like me) shouldn't have to drill down and try to suss out (by trial and error?) things like "Well, the Windows version is running on Windows 8, US English, with a SQLite back end, and this character set, so they're probably using blah blah blah collation, whereas the Mac version is also using SQLite, but the front-end library is sorting the results using the <xyz> collation, so...".  I understand that internationalization is hard, but it's definitely worth doing - and doing right - in a product like this.

 

According to this post, and this one (and many, many thanks to Owyn/Evernote Geek for doing the digging, and sharing his findings) Evernote seems to be using a custom collation called "NOCASEUTF8".  At least in SQLite.  Is that true?  Is that only on Windows?  Can we get any more info??  Specifically, what character sets and collations are supported in the back-end data store, and on each of the clients?

 

It definitely won't hurt the casual users (nor power users, nor trunk developers, nor anyone for that matter) for the Evernote team to be really explicit about which characters are supported, and which collations are used.  And ideally, the supported character sets and collations would be completely uniform across Mac/Win/Web/iOS/Android/Other.  This topic has been out there (and the cross-platform inconsistencies have been an issue) for YEARS now, so it'd be great for an Evernote dev to take an hour or two next week and just clear this up once and for all...

 

"An hour or two" he brazenly said,   :-D

-danrochman

[jefito 5,589]

Evernote only uses SQLlite on the Windows client, as far as I know; certainly not on the Mac or Android clients, and probably not on iOS. The custom collation thingie seems to be because SQLlite has (or had) no support for a case-insensitiv UTF8 sort, if I interpret this article correctly (not an expert in this, by any stretch). Having Evernote use identical collation across clients would be a good thing, I'd guess. Not sure what "an hour or two"  expands out to in terms of actual Evernote time, I know you're just being ironic (or whatever the term is). I do use a few non-alpha prefixes here and there, but I'm not as particular as others are, I think. Sadly, Owyn hasn't been around for awhile; he was a good source of good information.

[Adjusting 276]

Speaking of which: I previously reported that the alphabetic sort order in Danish is wrong (the last letter 'Å' being sorted after 'A'). It's as annoying as it is embarrassing.

Edit: I forgot the cross platform bit: The Windows client does it properly, whereas the iOS version gets it wrong too.

 

This works for me (Å sorts after Z). Make sure you set "Rækkefølge til sorterede lister" to "dansk" in the Language tab of Language and Text in System Preferences.

[pgdahl 133]

Speaking of which: I previously reported that the alphabetic sort order in Danish is wrong (the last letter 'Å' being sorted after 'A'). It's as annoying as it is embarrassing.

Edit: I forgot the cross platform bit: The Windows client does it properly, whereas the iOS version gets it wrong too.

 

This works for me (Å sorts after Z). Make sure you set "Rækkefølge til sorterede lister" to "dansk" in the Language tab of Language and Text in System Preferences.

 

I can confirm that it does work now, which is nice. However, I didn't change anything. 

 

Edit: I mean, my sort order was also set to "dansk" when I encountered and reported the problem.

 

Edit2: And iOS still gets it wrong.

[khand0527 0]

Is there a solution to the tag sort order problem across platforms?  I'm using the secret weapon system for GTD and I'm having the same issue as chimericdream  

 

Evernote, the secret weapon, tag sort order, Getting things don, GTD

[nomnom54 0]

Similar problem here. On my Macbook, in list view when I sort by tags, it looks something like this:

 

1-Now

1-Now, @home

1-Now, @office

2-Later

2-Later

2-Later, @home

 

But then when I view the same thing in on my Windows desktop, it looks something like this:

 

1-Now

2-Later

2-Later

1-Now, @home

1-Now, @office

2-Later, @home

 

I prefer how things are sorted on my Macbook. Any thoughts on how to tweak things on my Windows desktop to make it sort like my Macbook?

[jefito 5,589]

I cannot quite replicate your Windows scenario. This is in version 5.6.4.4632, the latest as far as I know.  For one thing, when I tag notes as you have, the tags display as follows (note that the '@' tags appear before the '1-' and '2-' tags in a note's tag list (note that this is the same order that they display in the note header when you select the note):

 

1-Now

2-Later

2-Later

@home, 1-Now

@office, 1-Now

@home, 2-Later

Not sure whether there's any sorting of tags in a note's tag list -- they're not sorted in the same way as the order presented by the list itself, if '1-' precedes '@' in normal sorting order (which is curious), and they're listed in a different order than I added them when tagging the notes (since I added them as shown in your list).

Anyways, I really can't make sense of the sorting order that you show. If sorted according the the list as you see it, it doesn't make sense (seems clear that the '1-' items should sort before the '2-' items). If sorted according to the list as I see it, the order doesn't make sense either (the '@home' items should both precede the '@office' item). I have to ask this question just to make sure: are you sure that you're sorting your note list by tags in the Windows client?

For the record, when I sorted my list, it sorted correctly according to the tag order shown in the notes:

1-Now

2-Later

2-Later

@home, 1-Now

@home, 2-Later

@office, 1-Now

Not really understanding this...

[nomnom54 0]

Apologies for the confusion. Basically, my question is how to change my Windows scenario (or you can even use the Windows scenario you provided) into the way my Mac sorts things. I want my tags to be able to sort like this:

 

1-Now

1-Now, @home

1-Now, @office

2-Later

2-Later

2-Later, @home

[jefito 5,589]

No workarounds that I can see, if tag sorting of notes uses a criterion based on note's tags that are not in the same order from client to client (i.e. Mac has "1-Now, @home" but Windows has "@home, 1-Now"). I don't see any intrinsic reason why the tags in a note aren't sorted in the same way across clients; it may just be an oversight.

Evernote reads all of these posts, so they should take it as a bug and/or feature request, but it would be good to report it as well via a support request.