Ethereal-dev: RE: [Ethereal-dev] GUI: Arrow directions for column sorting order ?
The convention either refers to the meaning of the
*word* "ascending" (point up) / "descending" (point
down), or to the *order* (first --> last).
The funny thought about this is that:
- Ascending order means that you go from a low value
to a high value, hence the arrow points up.
However we humans write the first entry first and
typically write the next entry on the next line,
hence the down arrow for indicating the lowest -->
highest order as written :)
- Descending order means that you go from a high value
to a low value, hence the arrow points down.
Again, the arrow inicating the natural sort order
points from the first to the last element, hence
it points up :)
Hence both conventions (*word* versus *order*) have the
opposite representation.
I would propose to use an unambiguous convention, maybe
with 3 triangles of increasing size pointing left to right
for natural sort order, and the vertically flipped image
for the reverse order. This assumes a left-to-right writing
convention, of course :)
Another possibility is to write a->z (z<-a) for text columns
and 0->9 (9<-0) for numeric columns. We could do a similar
thing for date/time columns.
There are many other possibilities, though.
Regards,
Olivier
| -----Original Message-----
| From: Guy Harris
|
| On Jan 22, 2004, at 1:37 AM, Lars Ruoff wrote:
|
| > while doing the column sort for RTP analysis (the code for which i
| > stole
| > shamelessly from endpoint_talkers_table.c), i was confused
| by the way
| > the
| > arrows point for the appropriate sorting orders.
| > This is just a matter of conventions of course, but i
| realised that
| > Windows
| > conventions (eg. Windows Explorer) are just the other way
| round, i.e.
| > Ascending order (1,2,3,...): Arrow UP
| > Descending order (9,8,7,...): Arrow DOWN
| >
| > Is the way Ethereal does common in the Unix (or any other) world?
|
| Well, on the UNIX on the desktop on which I'm typing this:
|
| http://www.apple.com/macosx/
|
| the arrow points up when sorting in ascending order and down when
| sorting in descending order, although from this screenshot:
|
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/mail/
it appears to be the other way around. No, I have no clue why that is.
(Both my desktop and the one in that screenshot have Mail doing
threading.) This screenshot:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/
OSXHIGuidelines/index.html
shows the arrow pointing down for a list sorted in descending order.
At least from this screenshot:
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/images/3.1/fullsize/11.png
and this screenshot:
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/images/3.1/fullsize/92.png
it appears that KDE has a downward-pointing arrow for ascending order.
And from this screenshot:
http://www.ximian.com/images/screenshots/evolution/
exchange_folders_email.png
it appears that GNOME (and perhaps non-GNOME GTK+ applications) tend
not to bother telling you in what order a column is being sorted. (I
haven't found any Nautilus screenshots showing lists of files rather
than icons, although there presumably are some.) This screenshot:
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/
controls.html#controls-lists
also shows no sort order flag.
