4 ms·

No, I think it should toggle between ASC and DESC, as it does. Now, one thing that is very important to me: The sort should be stable. So, for example, I shoul

by FabHK 7y ago

No, I think it should toggle between ASC and DESC, as it does. Now, one thing that is very important to me: The sort should be stable. So, for example, I should be able to sort by successively by track number, disk number, album, and artist, to get a view that is sorted by artist, album, disk, and track. Unfortunately, some views (eg iTunes list view) don't obey that.

garmaine 7y ago
This seems orthogonal? It certainly is compatible with what the post you are replying to is suggesting.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- laGrenouille 7y ago
  After thinking this through for a moment, I think the point here is that there are two fundamentally different ways of thinking about sorting. To the original poster, it's a way of viewing the data. It doesn't change the original ordering of observations in the table, and it makes sense then to be able to turn it off... To the second comment, it is a way of actually changing the representation of the data. That's why you would expect it to be stable and dependent on the order that the sorting was done. Personally, I like the idea of it being a way of viewing the data rather than a change to the data. It would even make sense to be able to sort by column A, and then click to sort column B to breaks ties, and column C to further break ties ect. (though there would need to be a visual describing the precedence of the sorts to the user). Then, you can undone any of these by clicking a column twice more.
- FabHK 7y ago
  Yes, it's somewhat orthogonal. Having a third click meaning "ignore that I clicked here" is certainly fine. But please be stable :-)
rypskar 7y ago
I think it depends. I like they way it work in Spotify, where the third click on a heading returns to default sort. Most of the time I want it sorted by default order, but when looking for a song I change to order by name and after finding the song I want an easy way to get the playlist back to default sort
Sharlin 7y ago
If there's a "hidden" intrinsic ordering in addition to the by-column orderings, then the third click should indeed reset the data to that intrinsic ordering. A music player playlist is a great example; it's a list, meaning each element tuple is augmented with a unique integer, its index on the list. The user can reorder the elements on the list arbitrarily, and the list must be revertible to the custom order after sorting by any column.
- FabHK 7y ago
  Couldn't that be made explicit by having a list index in the first column?
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    It could, and I thought of mentioning it, but I haven't seen it in the wild anywhere. Probably it would just add clutter and look confusing when the list is sorted by something else. The triple-click UI seems to be a fairly established way to do it.
    - FabHK 7y ago
      It's interesting, I just checked - in iTunes, if you switch a playlist to View As -> Song, then it does display a first column with numbers 1..N. Now, if you sort after some other column (say, Artist), the first column does not get permuted accordingly, but stays 1..N. However, if you click the first column, it brings the playlist in the original order, and if you click again, it brings it in reverse order (while still displaying 1..N). A bit weird, but effective. But then, sort is not stable. For example, if I sort by song name, and then by genre, the songs within a genre are not sorted by song name, but (for some unfathomable reason) by artist. Very annoying. Bad iTunes, bad. (This is on macOS Mojave, haven't dared the jump to Catalina yet.)
      - Sharlin 7y ago
        Just checked and Spotify sorting isn't stable, either. Presumably this is because, as with most apps based on a database of some sort, there may not be a "materialized" in-memory data model that one would sort, but the column to be sorted by is passed to the backing database as a part of a query. The app could, I guess, remember the last few sort-by columns and craft the query accordingly. However, insofar as most people desire the ability to sort by multiple columns, they'd likely also want a more intuitive UI than clicking the columns in the reverse order of priority. A few years ago I participated in developing a datagrid component where you could add columns to the sort order by shift-clicking.

by FabHK 7y ago

garmaine 7y ago

This seems orthogonal? It certainly is compatible with what the post you are replying to is suggesting.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
laGrenouille 7y ago
After thinking this through for a moment, I think the point here is that there are two fundamentally different ways of thinking about sorting. To the original poster, it's a way of viewing the data. It doesn't change the original ordering of observations in the table, and it makes sense then to be able to turn it off... To the second comment, it is a way of actually changing the representation of the data. That's why you would expect it to be stable and dependent on the order that the sorting was done. Personally, I like the idea of it being a way of viewing the data rather than a change to the data. It would even make sense to be able to sort by column A, and then click to sort column B to breaks ties, and column C to further break ties ect. (though there would need to be a visual describing the precedence of the sorts to the user). Then, you can undone any of these by clicking a column twice more.
FabHK 7y ago
Yes, it's somewhat orthogonal. Having a third click meaning "ignore that I clicked here" is certainly fine. But please be stable :-)

rypskar 7y ago

I think it depends. I like they way it work in Spotify, where the third click on a heading returns to default sort. Most of the time I want it sorted by default order, but when looking for a song I change to order by name and after finding the song I want an easy way to get the playlist back to default sort

Sharlin 7y ago

If there's a "hidden" intrinsic ordering in addition to the by-column orderings, then the third click should indeed reset the data to that intrinsic ordering. A music player playlist is a great example; it's a list, meaning each element tuple is augmented with a unique integer, its index on the list. The user can reorder the elements on the list arbitrarily, and the list must be revertible to the custom order after sorting by any column.

FabHK 7y ago
Couldn't that be made explicit by having a list index in the first column?
- Sharlin 7y ago
  It could, and I thought of mentioning it, but I haven't seen it in the wild anywhere. Probably it would just add clutter and look confusing when the list is sorted by something else. The triple-click UI seems to be a fairly established way to do it.
  - FabHK 7y ago
    It's interesting, I just checked - in iTunes, if you switch a playlist to View As -> Song, then it does display a first column with numbers 1..N. Now, if you sort after some other column (say, Artist), the first column does not get permuted accordingly, but stays 1..N. However, if you click the first column, it brings the playlist in the original order, and if you click again, it brings it in reverse order (while still displaying 1..N). A bit weird, but effective. But then, sort is not stable. For example, if I sort by song name, and then by genre, the songs within a genre are not sorted by song name, but (for some unfathomable reason) by artist. Very annoying. Bad iTunes, bad. (This is on macOS Mojave, haven't dared the jump to Catalina yet.)
    - Sharlin 7y ago
      Just checked and Spotify sorting isn't stable, either. Presumably this is because, as with most apps based on a database of some sort, there may not be a "materialized" in-memory data model that one would sort, but the column to be sorted by is passed to the backing database as a part of a query. The app could, I guess, remember the last few sort-by columns and craft the query accordingly. However, insofar as most people desire the ability to sort by multiple columns, they'd likely also want a more intuitive UI than clicking the columns in the reverse order of priority. A few years ago I participated in developing a datagrid component where you could add columns to the sort order by shift-clicking.