The Gnome developers appear to be unwilling to fix this after nearly 8 years. I've attached an example of the issue where it is clear that the sort order is wrong, even for proponents of natural sort ordering.
It can be fixed for Nautlius by changing g_utf8_collate_key_for_filename() to g_utf8_collate_key() nautilus-3.10.1/libnautilus-private/nautilus-file.c but this only affects Nautilus windows. File dialogs still use the wrong sort order. In glib, g_utf8_collate_key_for_filename() is broken for anything with leading zeros (it sorts 2009.1 before 2009.05) so it doesn't even get natural ordering correct. The sort order of g_utf8_collate_key_for_filename() is too aggressive in splitting up filenames into separately ordered components, which makes it inconsistent with user expectations for highly structured filenames. Some sort of desktop-wide "use natural sort order" setting is required to allow the behaviour to be adjusted. An environment setting for glib would do (although the change wouldn't be effective immediately). ** Attachment added: "Invalid sort order which orders "3" both before and after "4"." https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/322271/+attachment/4118397/+files/invalid_sort_order.png -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to nautilus in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/322271 Title: Sorting by name doesn't work well with digits or special chars Status in Nautilus: Confirmed Status in “nautilus” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Bug description: Binary package hint: nautilus On my local disk there is a folder with the following contents: stefan@ubuntu:~/Dokumente/*/*/*/FLASCHEN_15cm$ ls 0,2LMW 0,33LMW 0,5LMW 0,5LMWPET 1,0LEWPET 1,5LEWPET I did not include the full path for legal reasons, since it includes names of my customers and brand names. Instead of these, I put * to indicate another subdirectory. However, when I display this folder in nautilus sorting alphabetically by file name, the resulting order is: 0,2LMW 0,5LMW 0,5LMWPET 0,33LMW 1,0LEWPET 1,5LEWPET ProblemType: Bug Architecture: i386 DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10 ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus NonfreeKernelModules: ath_hal Package: nautilus 1:2.24.1-0ubuntu1 ProcEnviron: PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: nautilus Uname: Linux 2.6.27-9-generic i686 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/nautilus/+bug/322271/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
