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Peter.O
Asked: 2010-11-02 19:12:26 +0800 CST

Nautilus sorts the Name-column "mysteriously". How can I change the collating sequence?

  • 772

What I describe here is not about a problem with my Nautilus. (it is the default behavour)

I understand why Nautilus sorts the Name-column (ascending) so that "6 cats" occuring before "10 dogs"... Its collation sequence is treating a group of numeric-digits as a single number-value and not as individual characters.

That's fine... I can see some value in it, but personally I find it to be confusing,

And I have no idea why Nautilus completely ignores many leading non-alpha-numeric characters.. ie.!@$%^_:"- etc. as typed via as standard US keyboard..
By "ignore", I mean "---two camels" sorts to be immediately above "two camels", as if the "---" didn't exist... (strange !?).

How can I change the default collating sequence?...

gconf-editor /apps/nautilus/list_view shows some sort options, but does not offer a choice of collation option....
I hope there is an way to do this (otherwise Windows Explorer is one-up on this issue :( Windows allows you to choose the conventional collation sequence (via the registry)

nautilus sort

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    This answer is a workaround.
    I've put this information forward because it seems that Nautilus just can't sort in the manner I prefer / want / need.

    PCMan File Manager has a similar look and feel to Nautilus, yet it sorts the detaill view in a "by the column" fashion...

    It sorts with most of the "special" characters to the top, and a few to the very bottom.. It is case insensitive, and is very close to what I was looking for (..."approximate ASCII"? followed by the remaining normally-sequenced Unicode Codpoint values/characters)..

    It is available in Synaptic Package Manager under the name: pcmanfm

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  2. The sorting of Nautilus follows the default collating of the locale. This means you have to override the collating of your locale.

    To get the sorting like you described, add the following line to ~/.gnomerc (create if it doesn't exist and mark it executable): export LC_COLLATE=POSIX. One downside is that capital letters will sort ahead of lower case letters.

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  3. Another workaround:

    in Krusader (version 2.2.0-beta1),

    • go to Settings > Configure Krusader...
    • Panel > View
    • and choose Sort method: Character code.

    Files with the same prefix are grouped.

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  4. If you just want to put certain files or folders at the top, you can still use your non-alpha-numeric character but it needs also a "."

    _.file.doc

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