What I describe here is not about a problem with my Nautilus. (it is the default behavour)
I understand why Nautilus sorts the Name-column (ascending) so that "6 cats" occuring before "10 dogs"… Its collation sequence is treating a group of numeric-digits as a single number-value and not as individual characters.
That's fine… I can see some value in it, but personally I find it to be confusing,
And I have no idea why Nautilus completely ignores many leading non-alpha-numeric characters.. ie.!@$%^_:"- etc. as typed via as standard US keyboard..
By "ignore", I mean "—two camels" sorts to be immediately above "two camels", as if the "—" didn't exist… (strange !?).
How can I change the default collating sequence?…
gconf-editor /apps/nautilus/list_view shows some sort options, but does not offer a choice of collation option….
I hope there is an way to do this (otherwise Windows Explorer is one-up on this issue 🙁 Windows allows you to choose the conventional collation sequence (via the registry)
Best Answer
This answer is a workaround.
I've put this information forward because it seems that Nautilus just can't sort in the manner I prefer / want / need.
PCMan File Manager has a similar look and feel to Nautilus, yet it sorts the detaill view in a "by the column" fashion...
It sorts with most of the "special" characters to the top, and a few to the very bottom.. It is case insensitive, and is very close to what I was looking for (..."approximate ASCII"? followed by the remaining normally-sequenced Unicode Codpoint values/characters)..
It is available in Synaptic Package Manager under the name:
pcmanfm