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ramack / ActivityDiary

Android diary for any kind of activities
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Alphabetical sort appears wrong #230

Open XilinJia opened 5 years ago

XilinJia commented 5 years ago

If I set Alphabetical sort to 50, and all other sorts to off, then at the front page, though most activities show up in order, some activities are out of the place.

Plus, the ordering appears to be shown vertically. Would it be better to show them horizontally?

ramack commented 5 years ago

Thanks for reporting. But I cannot reproduce. For me the sorting looks correct. Can you share a screenshot?

About the sorting direction I think it is best as it is. Sorting is horizontal, as you need to go left for A and right for Z. For sure the columns need to be sorted inside this.

That some look to be out of order is probably due to the different width, but I believe it is correct.

XilinJia commented 5 years ago

Can't attach a jpg file for some reason?

XilinJia commented 5 years ago

screenshot_20181116-141927

Doesn't work on Firefox on Mac. Seems working from Chrome.

ramack commented 5 years ago

Looks perfectly sorted to me. Imagine a vertical line going from left to right. Then you recognize the sorting. Vertical sorting is only used if the several activitiy-boxes start at the very same horizontal position.

At the beginning I also tried to use a vertical scrolling (and therfore also sorting) but it is not smooth, because the activity boxes are (and I think have to be) inlandscape.

XilinJia commented 5 years ago

I don't see how it's sorted. For instance, from Clean -> Coding -> Excursion, which is fine so far, but then, -> Movie -> House -> Meal?

ramack commented 5 years ago

It is sorted from left to right at first, the top down sorting is done only if multiple boxes are exactly aligned below each other - which essentially happens only at the left edge, but not later, because the cards have all different width. Look at those lines:

48602336-c47de880-e9ad-11e8-950d-f0c0f90b4d71

For the first we have the cards for "AppTest", "Bicycle", ... "Excursion" all starting at the same x position, so they are secondly sorted top-down. The next line is at the start of "French" (the direct successor of "Excursion", followed by "House" and "Jog" at the 3rd line. For "Movie", "House" and "Meal" it is clear: House is more left because H is before M in the alphabet.

If you add 200 more activities and you search for something be horizontally scrolling this sorting is the only reasonable.

XilinJia commented 5 years ago

Well, this concept is very foreign to me. Though I see what you say, I doubt I will be at ease at all finding the one I will need. There is no clear rule to the mind, so my eyes will have to look though all around to find the one I need.

Wouldn't it be easy to order them such that, for instance, on the first row from left to right we have AppTests -> Bicycle -> Browse, and then on the second row we have Clean -> Coding -> Excursion, and so forth? Then my eyes will easily know where to look for the one activity.

ramack commented 5 years ago

in your case with a big screen compared to the amount of viewable activity cards it would potentially be better like you propose, but on smaller screens it could get problematic. Also I would like to keep the same concepts as everywhere in Android and not reinvent the wheel. Actually the displaying is done by a standard android widget...

If you have trouble to find an activity you can also use the "magnifier" in the toolbar and just type what you search for..

XilinJia commented 5 years ago

Oh, I see.

The trouble I have is basically a few seconds of looking vs one second of pin-pointing. The magnifier only makes it longer.

ramack commented 5 years ago

maybe we should provide an option to select whether the recyclerview shall be in vertical or horizontal orientation, as for wide screens (such that maybe in average 4 activities fit beside each other) it might be benefitial to have it vertically sorted...

XilinJia commented 5 years ago

Actually, if I keep this sort for a while, then I kind of remember where items are. It just seems a bit unruly.

BTW, I have been experimenting with the combinations of other sort methodologies provided. My sense is that they are not very useful. They can make things harder to find. Not sure what your experience is.

ramack commented 5 years ago

I have in the meantime around 400-500 activities in my list. you can imagine, that alphabetical sorting ist not very helpful... Bu I also did not yet reach my goal to have the up most activity always what I do next, so the app is by far not yet able to switch automatically. Even though in many cases like going to work after breakfast it usually works well, while in the other cases I use the search aucessfully...

For me it is really some kind of diary. where I log everything that I could imagine to ask myself later 'when did I do THAT the last time' or where I want to take some pictures which are searchable etc.

So I'd say it clearly depends on the use case which weights are good for which sorting condition...