Numerical ordering of collections in the Android app

warguelles

A new plugin (Numify) has just been released, allowing collections to be sorted numerically by prefix, including nested subcollections (1.1 X; 1.1.1 Y, etc.). The plugin renumbers automatically, is easy to use, and sorts collections correctly in the desktop app.

However, the Android app sorts them alphabetically, resulting in:
1 X
10 Y
11 Z
...
2 A
20 B
21, and so on...

Android app sorts nested subcollections correctly... the issue is with the “main” collections. Is there a way to set numerical sorting on Android?

DimaP

Hello!

To give you some insight into this issue in the official Android app: we would prefer the sorting logic to be exactly the same across all platforms for consistency. However, so far we haven’t been able to achieve that on Android.

Here is a fairly old issue that explains the problem in more detail:
https://github.com/zotero/zotero-android/issues/97

I can’t clearly remember what I tried before, as it was quite a while ago, but it might be worth trying a third-party sorting library or implementing custom sorting logic.

Currently, the development team is focused on new features and other bug fixes. However, I believe that fixing this bug in the official Android app would benefit not only Numify plugin users, but many others as well.

So if you have the time and interest to help figure this out for the official app, I’d be happy to assist by reviewing PRs.

warguelles

@DimaP , thanks for your quick response. I was not aware of that issue with Android (since 2023!). Hopefully it can be resolved, or at least a workaround can be found to make the order on Android the same as on other platforms.

I have asked the developer to see if it is possible to add a “zero” to the suffix of the collection title, but I'm not sure if that is feasible, and if it would solve this issue. Something like this:

01 X
02 Y
03 Z
03.1 A
03.2 B, and so on...

rafaelsilvaoliveira

Hey @warguelles!

Just pushed a new update (release v.0.3.0), let me know if this works for you!

Check the following box on the Numify settings:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u20157536/id9e4tzxq17og0x0686t.png

The sub-collections stay as is:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u20157536/p3sytix2l8bzui0p5q20.png


And on android, this leading zero now fixes the sorting:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u20157536/etulefpt3yq2hxve4bib.jpg

Feel free to download the latest .xpi file or wait a bit for the new release on the Zotero market place to install (the scraper takes a few hours to add the new release)

Thanks again for the suggestion and let me know if you would like to see others in the plugin!