Proposal: add group sorting filter

[Mark]

On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 4:45 PM, Frank Reininghaus
<frank78ac at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> 2013/10/8 Mark:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm using Dolphin' "Show in Groups" for a couple of days now and i must
> say
> > it works awesome! But while using it i began noticing missing certain
> > features. The feature that i'm going to describe in this mail is the
> first
> > one.
> >
> > When grouping is enabled i would like to have an option to sort the data
> > inside the groups in a global manner (so not per group, that would
> become to
> > complicated). My specific use case is grouping and then sorting the
> groups
> > by size, name, date, ... any of the options that is currently available
> > under Control -> Sort By.
> >
> > To make this example more "visible". My current setup groups by "type"
> and
> > then i want to sort the new groups by "date". Right now that is not
> > possible.
>
> Allowing the user to group the files not by the "sort role", but by a
> different "group role" would be possible. But like most features, this
> would come at a price:
>

as usual :)

>
> (a) Besides the existing menu entry "Show in groups", we would need
> another menu "Group by". This would basically be a copy of the "Sort
> by" menu, but should probably have another radio button "Same as sort
> role" or something like that, which is chosen by default and which
> would mean that the current behavior ("group role" == "sort role") is
> used.
>
> (b) Sorting items would have to be done in two stages: First sort by
> the "group role", then identify where the groups start and end, and
> sort these groups separately by the "sort role". Alternatively, one
> could modify the "lessThan" function such that it compares items
> according to the "group role" and uses the "sort role" as the
> fallback. Either way, the code in KFileItemModel will become more
> complex, and some additional code is needed in other places as well to
> provide an interface between the "Group by" menu and the new member
> variables in the model which would control the grouping behavior.
>

Ah damn, that's what i expected and feared. The KFileItemModel class is
already way to complex for my taste to even attempt adding anything more
complicated. I think this feature is very much likable at the very least
but perhaps it's a little too complicated to cram into an already
complicated class. Shall we just leave this as a nice "would like to have"
feature then?

>
> Now my question is: is there any evidence that this feature would be
> so useful to a large user group that cluttering the UI with the
> additional menu and making the code more complex (and thus harder to
> maintain in the future) is justified?
>

> Cheers,
> Frank
>
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