Sorting of fields does not differentiate between v and w

[bootrecords]

Since I'm alphabetically going over a large number of artists in my database, towards the end I noticed that Artists (and eventually probably entries of any field, for that matter) starting with the letters v and w are apparently treated equal, i.e. shown in mixed order, in my library:

As you can see, I use the AbraxSP skin, but no other plugins. Other than that, I use Version 4.1.5.1719 under Windows 8.1 Pro on an Intel Core i7-4790S with 16GB RAM and a mixture of SSDs and Hard Drives (of only relevance here are my system partition on a 120GB GeiL SSD hosting MediaMonkey and a 2TB Toshiba Hard Disk housing my library).
This bug also persisted when switching skins and closing and re-opening the program, so it is apparently reproducable. Since unfortunately it is rather hard to find previous reports on this issue in these forums or on Mantis (due to requests for 'w' and 'v' being mostly ignored, 'sort' leading to all SORTS of other completely unrelated threads and 'sorting' primarily shows another issue with the sorting), I have to assume this is a previously unreported issue.

[dtsig]

Doesn't appear to happen here ..

[Oul]

Something to explore: I had an issue with the : (colon) fairly recently. I had some classical which I'd set up the 3rd mvt as Rondo: Allegro
Windows duly converted this to Rondo_ Allegro

No problem so far, until I noticed that the track sorting had gone out in the database. On checking, the files were fine in Win Explorer, and the track numbers to titles were correct in the database, but nothing I tried in terms of corrective editing or otherwise could restore the right order. In the end, I deleted and re-ripped the tracks making sure to write Rondo. Allegro instead. All is now well for me. So, of course, I see a colon in W:ax and my suspicions are raised.

Avoid the colon when file naming in MediaMonkey.

[bootrecords]

Hm, I think I found the issue that was causing this weird sorting behaviour. It didn't have anything to do with colons, as Oul suggested. Instead, I use to have my Windows regional settings (not the system language settings, however) set to 'Finnish' in a rather strange way to attempt to learn the Finnish names for weekdays and months by the Windows calendar and lock screen, which is also causing some... unexpected... behaviour in some other programs. However, when in other software this regional setting usually involves the UI to show up in Finnish, in MM it apparently causes the alphabetic field sorting to not differentiate between v and w any more. When changing my regional settings to English or my native setting, everything sorts fine.

I wonder, however, if native Finnish users experience this issue by default, or if this issue vanishes when the actual OS language settings are Finnish as well. Also, I don't know how sorting is implemented in MM, but could imagine that it primarily involves calling some lower-level (i.e. OS-level/standard library) functions and is not really in the hands of MM itself, given that the observed behaviour changes when fiddling with OS settings like these - in which case this bug is not necessarily inherent to MM, but may be due to the OS. It might just be that my system lacks some Finnish dictionary files or something - I don't exactly know the nitty-gritty of Windows' language settings. However, if any checks on the Windows regional (instead of system language) settings are performed by MM, there might be something flawed somewhere and it probably won't hurt to check these code sections [just my two cents as a programmer].

Other than that, I guess this thread may be closed now.

[Mizery_Made]

"In Finnish, ⟨W⟩ is seen as a variant of ⟨V⟩ and not a separate letter. It is however recognised and maintained in the spelling of some old names, reflecting an earlier German spelling standard, and in some modern loan words. In all cases it is pronounced /v/."

[bootrecords]

I knew they are pronounced the same, even though both are used. I did not know, however, that they were actually even treated as the same letter in terms of alphabetical sortings - thanks for that explanatory peace of info. As it once again appears: it's not a bug, it's a feature!

[uhappyy]

Behaviour in some other programs. However, when in other software this regional setting usually involves the UI to show up in Finnish, in MM it apparently causes the alphabetic field sorting to not differentiate between v and w any more. When changing my regional settings to English or my native setting, everything sorts fine.??
__________________
Usman

[Lowlander]

MediaMonkey uses the PC locale to determine how sorting is treated. As said in Finish v and w are the treated the same.

Original bug report: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... =1&t=53403