When I type a name manually into the swap list, I try to make it START the same way that similar plant database names start (so they alphabetize together).
For example, "Hot peppers" under "H", not Peppers or Capsicum.
Where the database uses non-adjacent naming, I try to pick one naming format and use it as much as possible:
Chard vs. Swiss Chard
Lettuce vs. Butterhead lettuce.
>> I think having sorting options for the main swap list would be very helpful.
I agree!
Or it would be nice to have the "search" feature available in every list.
I think that "swap name search" finds any words in any order in the name. (And maybe even synonyms from the plant database alternate names?) Searching for "tomato" does seem to find all tomatoes, even if some were listed as Cherry Tomato (under "C" instead of "T").
(Of course, it would probably also find a Salvia named "Red Hot Tomatoes".)
At least, if you search a list using the "swap name search", it finds them all and tells how the list alphabetized each of them. For example, searching for "chard" would find both "Chard" and "Swiss Chard" (and, if there are any, "Rainbow Chard"). Then you know the main places to look first in any alpha list.
I often wish that my main swap list had the "search term" name-search feature, so that every time I add a plant to my swap list, I could check whether or not it is already in that list without checking three different regions of my Swap list for two or more synonyms (6 or 9 locations).
Very frequently, I want to add something to my main swap list, so first I search for it the only way I know how - by scrolling through my entire swap list. Often I miss it, add it, and then figure out days later that an item might have been entered twice, probably making it look like I have twice as many available to trade as I really do.
So I delete one of the probable duplicates, hoping that the other wasn't actually just from a different part of my stash and added on a different day, for example from a different vendor or a different year.
Since any given seed could have ??? different alpha names, and our swap lists are already divided into 3 regions, the only way I know to find something in the list is to scroll slowly past all of all three regions.
Lately I've been trying a two-step lookup. First I search the main plant database to find one (or more) ways that kind of seed might have been alphabetized. Then I check the list first at those points in the alpha list.
But since "My Swap List" has three regions, I still have to scroll through the whole list to find those 3, 6 or 9 locations.
(It would help a little if we could re-sort "my swap list" to merge the three categories, so we could find things in just one list, no matter which "region" they were in.)
My perspective is that "my swap list" just doesn't support alphabetical searching. You would have to know beforehand which of the three regions to look in, and every possible way the plant database might have formed the name.
