Wrong sort order in file selection dialog (Linux)

[danpla]

The file dialog on Linux doesn't seem to sort items properly:

Edit v1.0.0

[lhecker]

Do you have ICU installed? You can find that out by trying to search for something (Ctrl+F).

I suspect I did something wrong with my fallback collator:

edit/src/icu.rs

Lines 705 to 739 in e8d40f6

	/// Unicode collation via `ucol_strcollUTF8`, now for ASCII!
	fn compare_strings_ascii(a: &[u8], b: &[u8]) -> Ordering {
	let mut iter = a.iter().zip(b.iter());
	// Low weight: Find the first character which differs.
	//
	// Remember that result in case all remaining characters are
	// case-insensitive equal, because then we use that as a fallback.
	while let Some((&a, &b)) = iter.next() {
	if a != b {
	let mut order = a.cmp(&b);
	let la = a.to_ascii_lowercase();
	let lb = b.to_ascii_lowercase();
	if la == lb {
	// High weight: Find the first character which
	// differs case-insensitively.
	for (a, b) in iter {
	let la = a.to_ascii_lowercase();
	let lb = b.to_ascii_lowercase();
	if la != lb {
	order = la.cmp(&lb);
	break;
	}
	}
	}
	return order;
	}
	}
	// Fallback: The shorter string wins.
	a.len().cmp(&b.len())
	}

[danpla]

Yes, I have ICU (Ubuntu):

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu$ find libicu*so*
libicudata.so
libicudata.so.74
libicudata.so.74.2
libicui18n.so
libicui18n.so.74
libicui18n.so.74.2
libicuio.so
libicuio.so.74
libicuio.so.74.2
libicutest.so
libicutest.so.74
libicutest.so.74.2
libicutu.so
libicutu.so.74
libicutu.so.74.2
libicuuc.so
libicuuc.so.74
libicuuc.so.74.2

I guess that the problem is that the code tries to load libraries as ".so" instead of ".so.74". The former come from the -dev package, while the actual libicu74 only comes with ".so.74" and ".so.74.2" files:

https://packages.ubuntu.com/noble/amd64/libicu74/filelist
https://packages.ubuntu.com/noble/amd64/libicu-dev/filelist

[DHowett]

Idly, I'm left to wonder how that is not just a package authoring issue on Ubuntu's part. :)

[lhecker]

I already found loading ICU on Linux to be, quite frankly, really annoying (you can find my workaround around icu_proc_suffix), but this outright makes it impossible to load it trivially, doesn't it?

So basically, this represents two confirmed issues (unfortunately):

• compare_strings_ascii is broken
• We need another workaround for loading libicu on Ubuntu 😢

[danpla]

I did some more testing. As you saw from my previous message, I had the dev package installed, so ICU actually loaded without any problems (no error on Ctrl+F, the search works correctly). However, after I removed the dev package, the sort order remained the same as in my screenshot (Ctrl+F gives "This operation requires the ICU library").

In short, both issues remain, but the sorting code needs further investigation, i.e. does it take the ASCII path even when ICU is loaded, or is it something else?

[lhecker]

It probably failed to instantiate a converter from the dev package and then silently fell back to the ASCII-only sorter. That's different from the search functionality which does show an error message if ICU is missing (because there isn't even an ASCII fallback).

[lhecker]

Let's split this issue up: This issue will now be about the wrong sort order specifically and #172 will be about finding ICU (even if this issue contains some important pieces of information).