Annoying Lightroom "Feature"

[cleamon]

I'm starting to like Lightroom (Mac) a lot for management my photo collection. However, it has an annoying problem which is the sort order (in the film strip). Seems like a simple thing to me, but given the following filenames (for example):
DSCN0001.JPG
DSCN0001-1.JPG
DSCN0001-1-F1.JPG
DSCN0098.JPG
DSCN0099.JPG

it will order them like so:
DSCN0001-1-F1.JPG
DSCN0001-1.JPG
DSCN0001.JPG
DSCN0098.JPG
DSCN0099.JPG

That's just wrong! Is it me? Not a big deal on this small list, but on larger lists it's really annoying.

[wulf]

Where do the filenames come from? Poor little Lightroom is simply following the ASCII standard that places a hyphen (hex value 2D) before a full stop (hex value 2E). You'd also find a similar problem if you tried to sort a list of file names that included photo9, photo10 and photo11. Those would come out in the order 10, 11, 9; to get round that, you'd need to rename photo9 to photo09.

Ideally you want to use file names that sort as you expect; if they are autogenerated, you may need to do some renaming.

Wulf

[wulf]

Linux puts dashes before dots. That's what I'd expect - it fits the ASCII standard (and Mac OS X is based on BSD, another Unix-type system). I suspect that Windows is being "user friendly" by adding another twist that meets many expectations but doesn't follow the simple logical model.

If you're using a Mac and naming the files yourself, then I'd suggest a different naming convention. I use subject.date.sequence.filetype for individual files and then break that into folders for convenience. For example tree.20100212.jpg or flower.20100131.03.jpg.

If I have cause to save different versions, I'd probably add a modifier into the subject part of the name, such as flower_orton.20100131.03.jpg. That embeds a lot of data into the name and gives a sensible sort order. I can use more advanced searches to pick out all pictures within a particular date range (I embed that in the file name because I've found that the date sometimes gets mangled as I copy files from disk to disk).

Wulf

[cleamon]

Yeah, I've come to the conclusion that it's a Microsoftism that I see elsewhere. Databases such as mysql also order as you say. I could see MS having their file explorer or cmd prompt "user friendly", but it's strange that a spreadsheet, which should be OS/filename agnostic; it's just plain text, would sort in this "user friendly" manner. I created a small spreadsheet using these same names, I sorted the column and it came out in "user friendly" order. I then removed the dots from the names and re-sorted; this time it came out correctly. Weird huh?

It's not a big deal to me, but just caught me off guard. A file wasn't where I (until now) expected it to be in list, and I thought it was missing! Panic! Now I know that MS systems do it one way and (apparently) everyone else, another, I'll be prepared.

Thanks for the help.

[jli]

Originally Posted by wulf

Linux puts dashes before dots. That's what I'd expect - it fits the ASCII standard (and Mac OS X is based on BSD, another Unix-type system). I suspect that Windows is being "user friendly" by adding another twist that meets many expectations but doesn't follow the simple logical model.

If you're using a Mac and naming the files yourself, then I'd suggest a different naming convention. I use subject.date.sequence.filetype for individual files and then break that into folders for convenience. For example tree.20100212.jpg or flower.20100131.03.jpg.

If I have cause to save different versions, I'd probably add a modifier into the subject part of the name, such as flower_orton.20100131.03.jpg. That embeds a lot of data into the name and gives a sensible sort order. I can use more advanced searches to pick out all pictures within a particular date range (I embed that in the file name because I've found that the date sometimes gets mangled as I copy files from disk to disk).

Wulf

While I'm a Linux user, I don't necessarily agree just going with ASCII is a logical model. It's certainly simpler, but I don't think "normal" people think zero-padding numbers in file names (using "01" for 1 so it comes before 10, etc.) is logical.

I believe Mac OS's Finder takes care of zero-padding in a human-friendly way, right? At least, I'd strongly expect it too. Anyway .