Nautilus sorts the Name-column "mysteriously". How can I change the collating sequence?

Solution 1:

This answer is a workaround.
I've put this information forward because it seems that Nautilus just can't sort in the manner I prefer / want / need.

PCMan File Manager has a similar look and feel to Nautilus, yet it sorts the detaill view in a "by the column" fashion...

It sorts with most of the "special" characters to the top, and a few to the very bottom.. It is case insensitive, and is very close to what I was looking for (..."approximate ASCII"? followed by the remaining normally-sequenced Unicode Codpoint values/characters)..

It is available in Synaptic Package Manager under the name: pcmanfm

Solution 2:

The sorting of Nautilus follows the default collating of the locale. This means you have to override the collating of your locale.

To get the sorting like you described, add the following line to ~/.gnomerc (create if it doesn't exist and mark it executable): export LC_COLLATE=POSIX. One downside is that capital letters will sort ahead of lower case letters.