535050 - Support sorting by multiple columns in task list

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: Tasks, enhancement)

Description

[Pieter van Vliet]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: 1.0b2pre 13-Dec-2009 build

Using Lightning 1.0b2pre in TB 3.0. I sort the task list on multiple columns, for example from main to minor: Priority, Status and Title. The problem is that when I switch to the calendar tab and then back to the task tab the sort order is lost again.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Active tabs: Inbox, Calendar, Tasks
2. Go to Task tab
3. Sort ascending on Title, sort ascending on Status, sort on Priority (from high to low priority.
4. Result is the tasks are displayed sorted on Priority, within priority on Status and within status on Title. This is how it should be.
5. Open the Calendar tab.
6. Open the Task tab and after a few seconds the correct sorted task list is displayed in some undefined order. It appears that that "undefined" order is also the same.



Expected Results:  
Once the tasks are sorted on multiple columns that order should be maintained, regardless of opening other tabs or existing and restarting Thunderbird.

Comment 1

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

We currently do not support sorting by multiple columns. I could not reproduce the sorting getting lost when switching between tabs. Switching this to an enhancement request to be able to sort by multiple tabs.

For this to work out, we'd need some UI though to show by what columns the events are sorted.

Please keep in mind though, the thunderbird thread pane doesn't allow sorting by multiple columns either, and the unifinder might go away in the long run in favor of a calendar item search.

Comment 2

[Pieter van Vliet]

(In reply to comment #1)
> We currently do not support sorting by multiple columns.

I learned the trick for multicolumn sorting of tasks from ssitter (?) on this forum: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=46, but if you say that multicolumn sorting of tasks in Lightning is not supported then whatever results I see are bound to be unpredictable.

> I could not reproduce the sorting getting lost when switching between tabs.
> For this to work out, we'd need some UI though to show by what columns the
events are sorted.

Go to Tasks tab.
Sort tasks on Title in ascending order.
Then sort tasks on priority in ascending order.
Within each priority group the tasks are sorted in ascending order of Title.
Switch to the Calendar tab and then back to Tasks tab.
The tasks are still grouped by priority group, but within each priority they are no longer in ascending order of Title anymore.

Comment 3

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > We currently do not support sorting by multiple columns.
> 
> I learned the trick for multicolumn sorting of tasks from ssitter (?) on this
> forum: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=46, but if you say that
> multicolumn sorting of tasks in Lightning is not supported then whatever
> results I see are bound to be unpredictable.
I assume you mean http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=1533455&start=0 ? ssitter also comments here, lets see what he has to say.

> Go to Tasks tab.
> Sort tasks on Title in ascending order.
> Then sort tasks on priority in ascending order.
> Within each priority group the tasks are sorted in ascending order of Title.
> Switch to the Calendar tab and then back to Tasks tab.
> The tasks are still grouped by priority group, but within each priority they
> are no longer in ascending order of Title anymore.
I tried these exact steps with a few tasks:

a new task
b new task
c new task
e new task
f new task

But the tasks remained sorted by priority, then by title when switching tabs. Even reloading the calendars didn't change the sort order for me.

Comment 4

[Pieter van Vliet]

(In reply to comment #3)

Please repeat your test, but enter your tasks as follows all in the same priority (or default priority) group:

AAA task
FFF task
BBB task
EEE task
DDD task

Now sort ascending on title and then ascending on priority.
Within the priority group the tasks are ascending title order.
Switch to calendar tab and then back to tasks tab.

You will noticed that the tasks are now in the order they were entered (!) and not in the sorted ascending title order. Which is not surprising when multicolumn sorting is not supported as you noted earlier.

The multicolumn sorting is supported in some fashion, but is not "remembered" when switching to the calendar tab.