Re: [patch] Bug 88585, Sorting of size column is messed up

[David Emory Watson <dwatson cs ucr edu>]

On Tue, 2002-11-12 at 15:10, Tomas Junnonen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> this simple patch fixes the ascending and descending sort orders
> being reversed for the size column in the Nautilus list view.

This isn't a bug in Nautilus.  It's a problem with using the words
"ascending" and "descending" to describe data which may not have a well
defined order (better words would have been "normal" and "reversed").

> With this patch the size column behavior is consistent with the
> other columns.

Actually its still not consistent.  For example the date column sorts
from most recent to least recent when the arrow points down.  This is
what gtk+ calls ascending order, but numerically more recent dates are
larger then less recent dates, so the dates are really descending...

So why don't we fix the date column too?

Here's my rhyme behind the reason: "When the arrow points down, the user
does not frown, but instead they get what they want."  So basically, the
down arrow is used for the default (and hopefully most useful) sort
order.  The up arrow is the reverse of whatever the down arrow is.  When
I originally ran into this I decided that biggest file to smallest file
was more useful.  Go figure...

- David