unity-design team mailing list archive

["Alejandro J. Cura" <alejandro.cura@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 9:22 AM, Thorsten Wilms <t_w_@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 02/21/2014 11:08 AM, Sam Hulick wrote:
>>
>> I don't think A-Z is guesswork. Other operating systems and several apps
>> have already laid out the fact that an arrow pointing up is ascending
>> order, an arrow pointing down is descending order.
>
>
> The fact that you talk about the indicators as arrows already demonstrates
> part of the problem. An arrow shows direction, but how does it relate to the
> reading/writing direction implied by the list, and what comes first? Small
> or large, newer or older?
>
> The other interpretation of the indicators is that of triangles, with a tip
> that stands for the start of the sorting alphabet and for small.
>
> Even if you start from the terms ascending and descending, it's not obvious
> what that means for dates (time-since-then vs numerical value).
>
> I think this is somewhat representative of what an incredible strong
> consensus ;) can be found about the issue:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/338166/which-direction-should-the-arrows-point-in-a-sorted-table

Some interesting comments there.
I like the one about "A..Z" and "Z..A" for alpha, "1..9" and "9..1"
for numeric, "1..12" and "12..1" for dates.
Perhaps "Jan..Dec" and "Dec..Jan" would make it easier to read, but I
think it's leaps more descriptive than arrows.

cheers,
-- 
alecu