# order of special characters for organizing collections?



## Lursa (aka 9MMare) (Jun 23, 2011)

Hi all.

I've done some experimenting with the special characters provided by Amazon to list my collections in alphabetical order. Some have no effect on the alphabetization structure, doubling characters, i.e. ^^, apparently has no effect either.

Is there a list here on the board somewhere of what rank in order the characters hold? For me so far, its:

!
/ 
^
$
+

I know I've played with a few others but dont really remember where they fit in. And I know it's inconsequential (personal), but some of the characters, like $, are just too large and obnoxious for me to choose!


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## SusanCassidy (Nov 9, 2008)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#ASCII_printable_characters


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## Lursa (aka 9MMare) (Jun 23, 2011)

SusanCassidy said:


> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#ASCII_printable_characters


Thanks. Unfortunately, didnt find anything helpful there. What little I did understand didnt correspond to the way the characters are ordered on my K3.

But then again, I probably only understood about a third of it.


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## dmetzcher (Aug 28, 2011)

Here's a page that does a good job of explaining the sorting (and many other things).

http://blog.diannegorman.net/2010/09/kindle-3-keyboard-shortcuts-et-al/#collections1


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## Lursa (aka 9MMare) (Jun 23, 2011)

Thanks very much, her blog has amazing (& useful) details. I will be reading more.

Here is what she has as the special character sort order:

" ? } ; , . ' / ] \ " " ¡ ¿ ! @ # % & * ) - _ : ` ^ ~ ( [ { $ € £ + < = > | 0 1 2 b B c C a A (because the sort algorithm ignores leading words like 'a' and 'the')

And she recommends not using a space between the character and the first letter of the collection title (which she also explains further).

I would say that I do see at least one difference in how the special characters sort on my K3....my exclamation mark (!) takes precedence over the forward slash (/). And again....not all of those characters even 'registered' in my sorting...some seemed to have no affect.

But the experimenting is getting more interesting......


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## SusanCassidy (Nov 9, 2008)

Normal sort order is (for computers, which the Kindle is) (in either ASCII or UTF-:
! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , . / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? @ A-Z (if case-independent), all a, b, c, etc. sort as you would expect. If not case-independent, all upper case goes before lower case.

A bunch of the characters given in the list from the blog do not appear on the symbols list on my K1. Maybe K3 is different?


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## dmetzcher (Aug 28, 2011)

9MMare said:


> Thanks very much, her blog has amazing (& useful) details. I will be reading more.
> 
> Here is what she has as the special character sort order:
> 
> ...


Correct about the space in the name. The sort order changes if you use a space after the special character in the name. From the blog entry:



> I created collections with names in the form 'x mmm', where 'x' represents one of the symbols available via the Sym key. I then sorted by Title and they sorted in this sequence:
> " ? } ; , . ' / ] \ " " ¡ ¿ ! @ # % & * ) - _ : ` ^ ~ ( [ { $ € £ + < = > | 0 1 2 b B c C a A (because the sort algorithm ignores leading words like 'a' and 'the')
> 
> For all these collections, I then renamed them, removing the space after the symbol so all names were in the form 'xmmm'. I resorted by Title and came up with an entirely different sort order:
> _ , ; : ! ¡ ? ¿ / . ` ^ ~ ' " " " ( ) [ ] { } @ $ € £ * \ & # % + < = > | 0 1 2 a A b B c C


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## SusanCassidy (Nov 9, 2008)

A space sorts before any other printable character.  Did not make that clear in my list.


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## Lursa (aka 9MMare) (Jun 23, 2011)

Well now more confusion...it was very frustrating last nite.

I wanted to add a new collection, and asssigned it the same character as my other collections at that level, the forward slash (/). It will not sort! It ends up sorting alphabetically by the first letter of the collection name rather than the special character.

What is up with this? What puzzle piece(s) am I missing?


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## SusanCassidy (Nov 9, 2008)

Slash can be a special character (used in a special way) to Linux-based systems, which the Kindle is.  I would pick a different character.  Don't use back-slash, either.


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## dmetzcher (Aug 28, 2011)

SusanCassidy said:


> Slash can be a special character (used in a special way) to Linux-based systems, which the Kindle is. I would pick a different character. Don't use back-slash, either.


A slash or backslash doesn't seem to have any negative effect, according to the blog post referenced above. I don't think collection names are directories or files in the Unix OS (if they were, using many of the special characters would present problems). They are likely entries in a configuration file (or files) that manages the content on the Kindle. Someone else with a deeper understanding of the Kindle's OS can comment here and educate me, however, because I don't understand exactly how it manages the collections and documents/apps contained within them.

_Edited: Corrected a typo._


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## Lursa (aka 9MMare) (Jun 23, 2011)

Not only that, the  forward slash is working perfectly fine sorting the other 9 collections I'm using it with in exactly the same manner. As I said, it's frustrating & confusing.


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## NiLuJe (Jun 23, 2010)

From the Kindle Collections plugin source, which should be pretty accurate:

# Articles ignored at start of title, unless two identical names have articles
SORT_ARTICLES = [ 'a', 'an', 'the' ]

# Kindle ignores these characters and sorts them randomly (unless name is only invisible characters:!
SORT_INVISIBLE = '-?/]#.\'\\*})&%;"!,' # means the visible are " _`^~'([{$+<=>|" + 0-9, a-z

# Sort order for all chars (invisible needed in case the collection is 1 char long)
SORT_CHARACTERS = '- _,;:!?/.`^~\'"()[]{}@$*&#%+<=>|0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'


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