I looked on the Ubuntu Launchpad site before posting here, and there was an ugly discussion about sorting.  Surely this has been discussed here, too.  But I could not find it in my initial search.

The "Sort by Name" option is a numerical-alphabetical sorting hybrid, which tries to put filenames like "2" before filenames like "16".  That makes sense in a lot of cases.

However, there are other cases where it causes the files to be sorted in a very unexpected way.  The main example I see is when filenames or folders are based on dates.

I have several folders that contain bank statements, with names like this:

20090215_monthly_statement.pdf
200903_first_quarter_summary.pdf
20090315_monthly_statement.pdf
20090415_monthly_statement.pdf
20090515_monthly_statement.pdf
200906_second_quarter_summary.pdf
20090615_monthly_statement.pdf

Or photos, in folders like this:

20100425_maker_faire
201004_easter
201004_new_york
201004_spring_outing
201005
20100509_mothers_day
20100530_jordan_lake
201005_shuttle_launch

In both of these cases, the dates which do not include specific days (they start with six digits instead of eight digits) appear in the list before all of the events which DO have days.  This is even true if I have a file with an unknown date, like "201004xx_beach_week".

I can see the point of having the ability to sort numerically.  But at the same time, I can see a valid point of sorting purely alphabetically, too.

Right now, my work-around is to insert dashes in between the year and month, and between the month and day.  That forces nautilus to sort by year numerically, then by month, then by day.

However, it would be nice if there were some sort of way to get nautilus to sort using strict alphabetical sorting.  This suggestion was met with some very heated discussion and a shamefully uncivilized tone in the Ubuntu Launchpad forums.  I hope that it receives some more thoughtful consideration here.

Thanks, as always, for making the Linux desktop awesome.

Alan Porter