Alphabetize all drop down menu lists

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Author Name: Jeffrey Meyer (Jeffrey Meyer) Original Redmine Issue: 6309

Redmine category:unknown

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Saw a past ticket on a similar item, but "Encoding" drop-down in Vector -> Geoprocessing Tools -> Buffer is way out of order.... very difficult to find "System" if you fat-finger a mistake and change it to UTF-16, for example.

Using 1.8 Lisboa.

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Author Name: Larry Shaffer (Larry Shaffer)

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Hi Jeffrey,

As far as I can tell, the Encoding popup menu in the save dialog is alphabetically sorted (Mac 10.7.4, with 1.8.0 and master). However, it's sorted by case as well, with upper coming before lower (ala Unix), not mixed. That menu would probably be more user-friendly with mixed case sorting.

Concerning alphabetizing ALL menu lists: lists should be sorted according to their content, not under a single policy. If alphabetization helps with efficient selection (as is the case with the list in question), then it should be used; otherwise, the ordering of listed items may be better sorted by other weighting means, like predetermined or dynamic priority.

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Author Name: Jeffrey Meyer (Jeffrey Meyer)

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Ugh! How embarrassing - misspelling in the bug title! ; )

Larry - thanks for the speedy reply - can't believe I missed the mixed case issue - QGIS'ing before coffee never pays.

Agreed ref: mixed-case - there should be mixed-case sorting, esp. when there are both ISO and iso items.

Not sure I agree with the latter point, about prioritization, for 3 reasons: 1) Newbies may not understand the differentiation, experts may kvetch, but they know what they're looking for. Noobs just get confused. Again, a personal belief, but I believe usability for noobs should be a high priority for any semi-technical application. 2) UI consistency. (yeah, yeah... a foolish consistency, hobgoblin of little minds...) This might just be a silly personal belief, but I believe programs should act the same way across all metaphors. Microsoft, for example, has done a complete butchery of figuring out which items are "commonly used" commands for its toolbar customization. Not sure what UI gurus like Jakob Nielsen think about this; a quick Google search didn't yield any interesting tidbits one way or the other. 3) Different people have different priorities & it's very difficult to pick a good set of winners for everyone.

In the case where there are clear priorities, perhaps a hybrid approach might work - something like country drop downs on English-speaking / focused sites - e.g.

United Kingdom United States ----------------- Afghanistan Albania Algeria ... Thanks!

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Author Name: Larry Shaffer (Larry Shaffer)

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Jeffrey,

I have found most popup menus in QGIS are similar to your hybrid example, or are already alphabetized if selections are purely of like kind. Let me know if you find one that needs alphabetized. I will look into sorting the Encoding list with mixed case, though it will not be backported to v. 1.8.

This is really a useability feature request, not necessarily a bug, and should be reclassified, if possible.

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Author Name: Jeffrey Meyer (Jeffrey Meyer)

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Hi Larry - no worries about a backport! I'll reclassify the ticket & make it specific to the encoding drop-down if you can point me to instructions / tell me how to do that. I cannot seem to find the link for editing the original ticket info. Do I need additional permissions / rights?

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Author Name: Paolo Cavallini (@pcav)

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• subject was changed from Alphabetzie all drop down menu lists to Alphabetize all drop down menu lists
• tracker_id was changed from 1 to 2

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Author Name: Larry Shaffer (Larry Shaffer)

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The case-insensitive sort fix for the encoding list is done with commit 652deba

The category for the issue should probably be set to GUI and left open, as there may be other lists that could use some better sorting since Qt's default qSort() is case-sensitive, with the uppercase items grouped before lowercase.

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Author Name: Pirmin Kalberer (Pirmin Kalberer)

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• fixed_version_id was changed from Version 2.0.0 to Future Release - Nice to have

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Author Name: John Tull (John Tull)

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This appears to have resurfaced for OS X in trunk. I'm using a Yosemite homebrew build of qgis-26 HEAD, and many of the drop-down lists are in chaotic order. For example, opening an R processing function, "Summary Statistics" and selecting the 'layer' drop down produces a list that is in no apparent order. I have seen this elsewhere in QGIS, but perhaps localized to plugins and processing tools. I have not been able to thoroughly determine how pervasive the issue is.

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Author Name: Giovanni Manghi (@gioman)

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• easy_fix was configured as 0

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Author Name: Jürgen Fischer (@jef-n)

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• category_id was configured as Unknown