Bug 134747 - sorting in calc can't be focused on letters alone
Summary: sorting in calc can't be focused on letters alone
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 50786
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
6.0 all versions
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) Linux (All)
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsUXEval
Depends on:
Blocks: Sorting
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Reported: 2020-07-12 13:02 UTC by foxtrot
Modified: 2020-12-09 09:43 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


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Description foxtrot 2020-07-12 13:02:27 UTC
Description:
When I have a list of texts, naturally I would sort it like this:
"Ich habe..."
"I'm gonna..."
"In der..."
"I want..."

But Libreoffice considers also whitespace and special characters and sorts it like this:

"I want..."
"I'm gonna..."
"Ich habe..."
"In der..."

(sorry for the mixed language - shouldn't matter, it's just about characters)


I didn't find an option to change that behaviour and also asked in a forum and didn't get a different result. 
Could there be an option to choose if only letters matter or all characters?

(actually I don't know since when this happens - maybe it was always like this, and it's just now bothering me enough to report that)


Steps to Reproduce:
1. make a list like in the description
2. sort it
3. ?

Actual Results:
"wrong" sorting

Expected Results:
"natural" sorting


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No



Additional Info:
Version: 6.0.7.3
Build-ID: 1:6.0.7-0ubuntu0.18.04.10
CPU-Threads: 4; BS: Linux 4.15; UI-Render: Standard; VCL: gtk3; 
Gebietsschema: de-AT (de_AT.UTF-8); Calc: group
Comment 1 himajin100000 2020-12-07 18:17:43 UTC
https://unicode-org.github.io/icu-docs/apidoc/dev/icu4c/ucol_8h.html#a583fbe7fc4a850e2fcc692e766d2826c

UCOL_ALTERNATE_HANDLING is UCOL_NON_IGNORABLE ?
Comment 2 foxtrot 2020-12-07 18:30:23 UTC
er... what?
Comment 3 Heiko Tietze 2020-12-08 13:59:33 UTC
More meaningful use case for ignoring spaces is in bug 50786. Names may be combined like "Mac Donald", "De Broukere", "von Guttenberg" etc. Would make this ticket a duplicate not least since Calc is not a text processing tool. If you paste the table into Writer and sort with Key Type = Phone book the result is what you expect.
Comment 4 foxtrot 2020-12-08 20:13:35 UTC
Aha... I understand, what you mean, but I don't agree. It's in both cases far from text processing. Names and - in my case - song titles in a table are both "data" of the type "character". 
Your example of "von der Lippe" is to be solved by an additional column for "von der" - a prefix that isn't relevant for sorting. I do something similar in another table with movie titles, where I have a column for the article at the beginning of a movie title, that is not relevant for sorting (the sixth sense, the italian job...) (and I even do some calculation there... sure not with the names). 
But both Flemish family names and song titles can't be parted like this or cleared in another useful way but considering only letters. And this setting/ option would now already cover two use cases (three, if we count movie titles, too), and who knows how many more...
Comment 5 Heiko Tietze 2020-12-09 09:23:10 UTC
(In reply to foxtrot from comment #4)
> Aha... I understand, what you mean, but I don't agree.

Hope you agree with making it a duplicate. Other ticket will receive more attention - and I'm going to change the summary from "ignore spaces" to "introduce phone book sort algorithm".

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 50786 ***
Comment 6 foxtrot 2020-12-09 09:43:28 UTC
sure, it's a duplicate