correct sorting of numbers in album names

[ikonomov]

It would be nice to have the library correctly sort albums with numbers in the title.  Currently they are sorted 1, 10, 11, 2, 3, etc.  This is most relevant for Album names of compilations with volume numbers, but it should apply to numbers inside all text fields.

[andrewilley]

PA treats all characters equally and does a 'proper' ASCII sort on them. This means that just like any other text string which starts with "A" comes before anything that starts with "B", similarly anything starting with "1" comes before anything starting with "2". This means that dual characters such "11" (which starts with the character "1") will be sorted before the single character "2". 

A work-around for this which has been used for years for such things as dates, disc numbers, and track numbers is to pad small numeric values out with leading zeros - so rather than naming files as "1. SomeTrack.mp3", "2. AnotherTrack.mp3", "10. LaterTrack.mp3", etc you use "01. SomeTrack.mp3", "02. AnotherTrack.mp3", "10. LaterTrack.mp3".

However for text content (for example, titles of chapters in audiobooks) I agree it would make sense if the List Options screen provided a setting for "Content Aware" sorting of the type you describe. See also another recent thread on the subject:

Andre