Tanja Hampf 

The solution is to rename the files.  It's simple enough and there are tools that can help you with this so you rename for the project and remove the renaming parts afterwards from the target files.  This is the sort of task a localization engineer would carry out for you.  For example... if you want to try a tool there are many to choose from, and some years ago I wrote about this one:

https://multifarious.filkin.com/2013/09/11/quickmerge/

Thank you, Paul. Unfortunately, any manual re-ordering of the files is no feasible option in our case. They're just too many (over 100 in my last project).

... But I just can't get my head around the fact why they don't come in the correct order in the first place, i.e. when setting up the Studio project. Isn't that sequence usually controlled by the XSD schema file (from the CMS)  that's imported as a filetype into Studio at some point? ... At least that's what we did at my old company and there was never any issue about this. 
 

Tanja Hampf 

Tanja Hampf said:

Unfortunately, any manual re-ordering of the files is no feasible option in our case. They're just too many (over 100 in my last project).

Who said anything about manually... you can do this in batch with a few rules.  You could even do this with a powershell script and then remove the prefixes later.

Tanja Hampf said:

Isn't that sequence usually controlled by the XSD schema file (from the CMS)  that's imported as a filetype into Studio at some point?

Yes, you're correct. When files and folders are generated by a Content Management System (CMS), the structure and order of those files and folders can be influenced by the XML Schema Definition (XSD) file associated with the CMS. The XSD file defines the structure and rules for XML documents that are used by the CMS to store and organize content.

However, it's important to note that the XSD schema file primarily governs the structure and validation of the XML documents within the CMS, rather than the actual file and folder organization within the file system. Once the files and folders are exported from the CMS and stored on your computer, the default sorting behaviour of your operating system (e.g., Windows) will take precedence.

In summary, the XSD schema file can control the structure and organization of content within a CMS, but once the files and folders are saved to your computer, the sorting behaviour will default to the operating system's sorting rules, such as alphabetical sorting in Windows.

Tanja Hampf 

Tanja Hampf said:

Unfortunately, any manual re-ordering of the files is no feasible option in our case. They're just too many (over 100 in my last project).

Who said anything about manually... you can do this in batch with a few rules.  You could even do this with a powershell script and then remove the prefixes later.

Tanja Hampf said:

Isn't that sequence usually controlled by the XSD schema file (from the CMS)  that's imported as a filetype into Studio at some point?

Yes, you're correct. When files and folders are generated by a Content Management System (CMS), the structure and order of those files and folders can be influenced by the XML Schema Definition (XSD) file associated with the CMS. The XSD file defines the structure and rules for XML documents that are used by the CMS to store and organize content.

However, it's important to note that the XSD schema file primarily governs the structure and validation of the XML documents within the CMS, rather than the actual file and folder organization within the file system. Once the files and folders are exported from the CMS and stored on your computer, the default sorting behaviour of your operating system (e.g., Windows) will take precedence.

In summary, the XSD schema file can control the structure and organization of content within a CMS, but once the files and folders are saved to your computer, the sorting behaviour will default to the operating system's sorting rules, such as alphabetical sorting in Windows.

I see what you mean now. Thank you! Is there any way the script could take the order from the ditamap file that's exported for each translation job (along with the xml source files)? Or do you know of any plug-in that could do that? 

Tanja Hampf 

Tanja Hampf said:

Is there any way the script could take the order from the ditamap file that's exported for each translation job (along with the xml source files)?

Maybe... although it's nothing I've tried to do and I have to get help from AI (ChatGPT for example) to be able to write a script like this in the first place.  So you could try the same thing.  What don't you have a go?  All you'd need to do is tell the program where the location of the folder containing all these files/folders is and then explain how you want it to use the information being read from the ditamap.

It's a lot easier to do these things than you may think.