215726 - Make "alphabetical" sort algorithm smarter

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Description

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

After reading a few requests regarding sorting some columns numerically rather
than alphabetically (e.g. bug 215716), I think this can be generalized even
further.

Given any string I would like a sorting that sorts numeric fragments within
the string numerically.  For example, if I have a bunch of mails with Subject:
"test1" "test2" ... "test10" I would like them sorted in that order, not as
"test1" "test10" ... "test9". This should be repeated from left to right, so
that for example "series1, test1" ... "series10, test10" is sorted correctly.
A couple of other examples where this would work nicely: bookmarks/name for
names that starts "Bug <number> ..." and bookmarks/location when the URL has
numbers in it, e.g. http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215716

I think this should be the default sorting algorithm where "alphabetical"
sorting is applied.

The request in bug 215716 is just a special case really, where the prefix
before the first number is empty.

Comment 1

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter "spam" on "guifeatures-nobody-20080610".