Malcolm Edgar [28/Mar/08 05:46 PM] Improve string value sorting with new ColumnComparator class. This replaces use of default Java String comparator for string values.

Malcolm Edgar [28/Mar/08 05:47 PM] Hi Bob, Could you please backport this fix to Click 1.4.1 regards Malcolm Edgar ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace _______________________________________________ Click-development mailing list Click-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/click-development

Bob Schellink [28/Mar/08 07:19 PM] How about having a Table#setComparator and Column#setComparator method? Then advanced sorting can be achieved. String sorting on alphanumeric characters is not too good. For example given this list: item2, item1, item11. After sorting the order would be: item1 item11 item2 What is probably needed is: item1 item2 item11 It would be hard for Click to solve all cases especially for i18n apps. Exposing the setComparator solves this for advanced cases.

Malcolm Edgar [28/Mar/08 08:28 PM] Bob, that sounds like a good idea. I think the Column#setComparator method would be good, and by default it returns a comparator for the column. Table#setComparator() is a little more tricky, is this a map of comparators keyed by column, or does it override column comparators. I will reopen this issue and do some more work. Regarding i18n, yes I have skipped this issue entirely, but as you say this gives more scope than the current strategy.

Bob Schellink [28/Mar/08 08:33 PM] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace. It's the best place to buy or sell services for just about anything Open Source. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;164216239;13503038;w?http://sf.net/marketplace

Bob Schellink [28/Mar/08 08:59 PM] >Table#setComparator() is a little more tricky, is this a map of comparators keyed by column, or does it override column comparators. I think Table's comparator should be the global one and Column is more specific. Thus Table's comparator can be set as a default, and each Column can override if it needs to.     table.setComparator(new AppComparator());     column.setComparator(new SpecialColumnComparator());

Malcolm Edgar [28/Mar/08 10:39 PM] Take #2 - have actually checked in the code this time :) This implementation adds a Comparator property to the Column class. Will gauge feedback to determine whether global Table comparator property is also required. regards Malcolm Edgar

Bob Schellink [29/Mar/08 02:23 AM] Hi Malcolm, Nice work done on this. The ColumnComparator's sorting is much better than String's default. In the ColumnComparator I notice you have this check:   if (value1 instanceof Comparable && value2 instanceof Comparable) {   ....   } else if (value1 instanceof Boolean && value2 instanceof Boolean) { Boolean implements Comparable. I don't think the second explicit check is needed here. Also should ColumnComparator be public? Cannot yet see where it would be useful outside of being the default comparator. In my experience comparators are pretty specific to the application. So either one would use the default or set a custom comparator specific to that column or table. Perhaps ColumnComparator should be package private in the control package? Or a inner class of Table or Column? kind regards bob

Malcolm Edgar [29/Mar/08 12:37 PM] Hi Bob, thanks for the review, great thing about open source. I have applied your suggestions, and made the class a public inner class. Regarding locale bases sorting, hopefully we will hear from the community if this is required. The performance of locale based sorting can be pretty awful in Java, this was my experience about 7 years ago. However these row lists are generally fairly small so it probably would not be a problem. regards Malcolm Edgar

Bob Schellink [29/Mar/08 06:44 PM] In JDK6 has exposed a neato solution for locale sorting:    http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/text/Normalizer.html For text we can do:     String normalizedString = Normalizer.normalize(mystring, Normalizer.Form.NFD); For those interested there is a good overview here:     http://weblogs.java.net/blog/joconner/archive/2007/02/normalization_c.html Long ago I wrote a alphanumeric comparator that sorts char for char. I added the Normalizer to it as well. Note that as you stated the Normalizer does have quite a performance impact ;-) When I have some time I will upload my version to clickclick.