Re: [Pan-users] Sorting issues - example

[Brian Morrison]

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On Thu, 12 Dec 2002 10:23:04 -0800 in address@hidden
Eric Ortega <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 09:22:41AM +0000, Brian Morrison wrote:
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> > On 11 Dec 2002 10:52:00 -0800 in address@hidden Chris
> > Petersen <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> > > Bring up alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.celtic and sort by subject. 
> >
> > The articles you refer to are correctly sorted by subject, the last
> > time I looked 1 comes before 3 in an alphanumeric sequence.
> 
> 
> Now, now, there's no need to be snippy.  There has been an ongoing
> discussion about "intelligent" sorting methods.  It's arguable that
> the numbering is not as important as the text ... it's arguable that
> it should be sorted in the way that you think is the most obvious.
> 
> That's what people have been discussing.  Not 1 vs 3 precedence.  :)

As you will see from above, the original poster said "sort by subject".
That's exactly what Pan has done, and it has done it correctly. If you
want 'intelligent sorting' as in 'group by some subset of the subject
and then sort in order of stuff between [ ]' then that is a different
request. If you need to do that then the algorithm to decide which bit
of the subject to use is likely to fail on occasion unless a standard
subject format is used. Remember that we are talking about USENET here
;-)

I didn't think I was being snippy, the problem is that until the
requirement is defined in a way that allows a solution to be coded
without guesswork it is unlikely to be 100% effective. However, that may
be enough for some people. If I used binary groups (which I don't) I
would be unhappy with anything less than perfection, but then that's not
easy to achieve....

- -- 

Brian Morrison

bdm at fenrir dot org dot uk
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