GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 458330
Fixing the sorting order for gnome-menu
Last modified: 2009-01-23 00:11:29 UTC
The default sorting of entries in the gnome-menu for en_US (and I guess for Latin languages) is alphabetical. However, in the Indic locales the sorting does not happen alphabetically in a proper fashion. One approach of solving this issue would be to fix the position for the entries so that they appear in constant order across the locale. For example if Accessories, Graphics, Internet were tagged 1,2,3 (I admit that there might be more entries in between, the example was from how my menu appears) then irrespective of the locale, the translated strings would assume the same position. This is an RFE and I would really like to understand what would be the issues in implementing this. Since Indic sorting is taking quite a while to get fixed, this might turn out to be a working solution.
(In reply to comment #0) Since Indic sorting is taking quite a while to get fixed, this might turn > out to be a working solution. There is expected to be a bit of discussion around this at: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2007-July/msg00010.html : Does anyone have comments on this ?
Hrm. Isn't this only a bug in I-don't-know-which-library that compares the strings to sort them?
(In reply to comment #2) > Hrm. Isn't this only a bug in I-don't-know-which-library that compares the > strings to sort them? No clue wherein lies the fix, but it does look odd when I see the menu for Indic especially. The sorting kind of messes up the stuff.
(In reply to comment #3) > (In reply to comment #2) > > Hrm. Isn't this only a bug in I-don't-know-which-library that compares the > > strings to sort them? > > No clue wherein lies the fix, but it does look odd when I see the menu for > Indic especially. The sorting kind of messes up the stuff. > So is anyone planning to take this up ?
Sankarshan: well, if the solution you're expecting is "have a fixed order for the menu items", I won't fix it. It makes much more sense to have alphabetical order. Having a workaround in all locales because there's another bug for one locale seems really like a wrong thing to me (even though I understand it can be frustrating). Note that you can fix the layout using a patch (just use <Layout> in /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu) The real problem seems to be really how the strings are sorted in Indic, and I can't help here since I don't know how this is supposed to work. Someone with some knowledge of Indic should look at the issue to understand what's happening.
(In reply to comment #5) > Sankarshan: well, if the solution you're expecting is "have a fixed order for > the menu items", I won't fix it. It makes much more sense to have alphabetical > order. Having a workaround in all locales because there's another bug for one > locale seems really like a wrong thing to me (even though I understand it can > be frustrating). Note that you can fix the layout using a patch (just use > <Layout> in /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu) Vincent, I am *not* demanding that the sort order be fixed. In fact the reason I did write to usability list is to figure out how much bad it would be if it is fixed for Indic but breaks everything else. > The real problem seems to be really how the strings are sorted in Indic, and I > can't help here since I don't know how this is supposed to work. Someone with > some knowledge of Indic should look at the issue to understand what's > happening. All I can say is that for bn_IN the current sort order looks really ugly. And that is really sad :(
This might be issue with the bn_IN locale itself. Could you post a (partial) list of the items that are sorted incorrectly (in the wrongly sorted order, as they appear on screen) ?
Marking as NEEDINFO for now, since there was no reply to Sayamindu's question.
(In reply to comment #7) > This might be issue with the bn_IN locale itself. Could you post a (partial) > list of the items that are sorted incorrectly (in the wrongly sorted order, as > they appear on screen) ? So in bn_IN here's what I see: অফিস শব্দ ও ভিডিও অন্যান্য ইন্টারনেট গ্রাফিক্স আনুষাঙ্গিক etc. The correct expected order however should be: অফিস অন্যান্য আনুষাঙ্গিক ইন্টারনেট গ্রাফিক্স শব্দ ও ভিডিও The correct expected order when translated into corresponding en_US appears as: Office Others Accessories Internet Graphic Sound & Video
As far as I can tell, it's not a bug in gnome-menus, but a bug in the locale. I'm going to mark the bug as NEEDINFO and give Sayamindu a few weeks to comment, but if he doesn't reply, then it's NOTGNOME for me :-)
It's NOTGNOME for me too :) Thus closing.