Who sorts the printer model names?

[Tom Horsley]

I couldn't find my LaserJet 6L in the list of HP printers
the first time I tried to setup a printer on FC6 because
I scrolled down through a bunch of HP model names till
I noticed I'd reached a chunk of LaserJet entries
and I see I'm at "LaserJet 1015", obviously
"LaserJet 6L" is after that, isn't it?

Bu no, the list stops at "LaserJet Plus", with no 6L
showing up. I eventually decided to look backwards
for the start of the LaserJet entries, and there was
the 6L I was looking for up near the top.

Huh?

It would make more sense if they were just completely
randomized, that way I'd know I had to look through
them one at a time :-).

[Tim Waugh]

On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 12:37 -0500, Tom Horsley wrote:
> I couldn't find my LaserJet 6L in the list of HP printers
> the first time I tried to setup a printer on FC6 because
> I scrolled down through a bunch of HP model names till
> I noticed I'd reached a chunk of LaserJet entries
> and I see I'm at "LaserJet 1015", obviously
> "LaserJet 6L" is after that, isn't it?

Well, '6L' seems like a smaller model number than '1015' to me, so I
would expect '6L' to come before '1015' just like I'd expect '250' to
come before it as well.  The models are sorted with numeric portions
compared as numbers.

Tim.
*/

[Tom Horsley]

On Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:45:51 +0000
Tim Waugh  wrote:
> Well, '6L' seems like a smaller model number than '1015' to me, so I
> would expect '6L' to come before '1015' just like I'd expect '250' to
> come before it as well.  The models are sorted with numeric portions
> compared as numbers.

"6L" doesn't seem like a number at all to me - last time I looked 'L'
wasn't a digit "LaserJet" isn't a number either, "LaserJet Plus" doesn't
have any numbers in it at all. Treating the names that happen to have
digits as part of their string content differently than the ones that
have no digits makes no sense at all. (The first thing I do when
I install Windows is go into explorer and turn off the "intuitive"
sorting since it isn't remotely intuitive and results in hours of
extra time trying to find files :-).

I know! Let's add "abcdef" to the characters we treat as digits and
intuitively sort the names by the numeric values of the hex constants
they happen to include as part of the string :-).

[Dave Mitchell]

On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 01:01:35PM -0500, Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:45:51 +0000
> Tim Waugh  wrote:
> > Well, '6L' seems like a smaller model number than '1015' to me, so I
> > would expect '6L' to come before '1015' just like I'd expect '250' to
> > come before it as well.  The models are sorted with numeric portions
> > compared as numbers.
>
> "6L" doesn't seem like a number at all to me - last time I looked 'L'

Well, to me it sounds like the L variant of the 6th model of the
laserjet. I personally would expect 6L to appear earlier in a list than
1015.

[Jef Spaleta]

On 11/7/06, Tom Horsley  wrote:
> Treating the names that happen to have
> digits as part of their string content differently than the ones that
> have no digits makes no sense at all.

I disagree. Numbers in model names can and do represent incremental
revisioning in a numerical scheme.. depending on the vendor.  I won't
even get started in the complication of how generally expected and
intuitive alphanumerical sorting rules differ for different language
groups.
> (The first thing I do when
> I install Windows is go into explorer and turn off the "intuitive"
> sorting since it isn't remotely intuitive and results in hours of
> extra time trying to find files :-).

Perhaps the solution that best fits for people who think differently
than me, people like you, is to have a text entry box where you get to
enter the model string(perhaps with wildcards) so you can get a short
list of known printer models which best match your string fragment, so
that you can avoid having to scroll through the full list of HP
printer models.

-jef"There is no single 'intuitive' way to parse and sort any
collection of data which is not programatically consistent.  To debate
such details as which lexicon rules to use to sort printer model names
for presentation misses the larger point entirely... which is.. no
pre-defined sorting ruleset will not be the 'best' way to parse data
for everyone. We should suppliment the sorted list with other. less
structured forms of information retrieval, which appeal to the
different 'intuitive' ways that different people think"spaleta