Thanks for your repies.
It’s version 5.8, downloaded at the RT site.
Double-clicking does not remedy the problem.
OK, here’s something weird I just noticed. I’m seeing the same thing in DarkTable, and well as Corel Aftershot. They’re all showing the same wonky listings.
However the Windows Explorer sees everything just fine. It’s only in the apps that thisis happening.
Any clues? I’m totally at a loss.
Thanks.
Edit, I’ve now looked at other programs such as IrfanView, FastStone Image Viewer, Openshot Video Editor, and and audio DAW Reaper, and they all see the folders just fine. So far it’s only RT, Darktable, and AfterShot, 3 RAW image processors, that can’t see the folders and are jumbling others.
This is really weird.
For this kind of problem, please provide relevant screenshots: what do you see, what do you not see, what do you expect to see?
OK, here’s screen shots of RT, AS, and DT. For some reason, now DT sees the folders and everything correctly, but as you can see, RT and AS still do not see folders beyond Sept. 7th 2020, also, when I look at folders in either Explorer or other apps, I can see all the folders normally.
Any clues? Thanks.
As far as I can see, everything between these three directories matches. I’ve highlighted some of the similarities in colors below. The thing that is probably confusing you, is that RawTherapee and AfterShot sort the folders a little differently than your OS and darktable. As you can see in green, RT and AS place the “10”'s on top (lexicographic order), whereas darktable interprets the “10”'s as a number and therefore places it lower (natural order). I bet that if you scroll up in the “Nikon 1 J4” folder you will find the folders from October and later.
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No. you missed the fact that RT doesn’t see anything beyond 9/7 in the J4 folder. Notice the last folder is called re-create. In the J4 folder, the last date above re-create is 9/7. Same for the AS folder listing. Now look at the DT folders listing above re-create.
The other folders, while they have later dates, are listed in reverse order to everything else, both in RT and AS, but once again, not in the DT folder listings.
The same goes for looking at those folders with Explorer or other apps. All other apps that I’ve opened so far work normally. ONLY RT and AS are doing this. I have no idea why,and now I’m wondering if Corel swiped some code from RT. 
Can you show me a screenshot of RawTherapee at the top of the same J4 folder? So, at the place where it branches off from its parent folder?
I don’t agree with you and I agree with @Thanatomanic. If you carefully look you see the following sequence of dates: 2020-9-1, 2020-9-10, 2020-9-17, 2020-9-2 and 2020-9-7. So on the upper end you will find 2020-1-, 2020-10-, 2020-2- and so on…
If you use dates to achieve a sequence always use yyyymmdd with or without separators.
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Well, you don’t have to agree with me, that’s all fine and well.
However the reality is that these two programs don’t see my folders and their files, therefore I can’t open my files to work on them, therefore I can’t use this program, therefore I just uninstalled both of them and I’m moving on.
It’s unfortunate because RT seems a very interesting program. I do hope it does work well for all of you, and that you enjoy using this program regularly. So at this time I will bow out of here and wish you all a beautiful life. 
You didn’t bring evidence of what you say as you didn’t answer to
It is true the files and dir are not sorted in the same order as the Explorer. The different order can bother you, I understand that.
My experience is different (some years of use of RT). At the beginning I had the same naming method to prepend YYMDD to names. I can assure you that all directories and files were displayed.
I went to the YYMMDD as it was better to read.(no shifting of names).
Well, you don’t have to agree with me, that’s all fine and well.
Good luck
I’m not disagreeing with you at all. I am one of RawTherapee’s developers and if something is wrong I want as much evidence of what is going on. Otherwise I cannot understand what I need to fix.
Please provide the screenshot I asked for if possible.
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I think the OP just ignored that he could scroll up and down in the folders panel 
OK, now I understand what you’re saying, and yes, I see the folders, shifted. However, this, and AfterShot, are the first programs I’ve ever worked with that do this. This is why I’ve been so confused.
So therefore, I have to ask, why go this route? When I look at folder and files in either Windows Explorer, or any other program I’ve ever worked with, the folders are always listed in their true chronological order, as you can see if the screen shot I have here of the Windows Explorer folder. I’m also at a loss as to why some folders, like the 2 CAMERAS folder, are listed in reverse chronological order, while the rest are not. I have literally hundreds of folders like this, and I’m not about to go renaming them all.
So is there a way to have RT list programs in proper chronological order?
Thanks again for your replies.
As far as I remember, before Windows XP the sorting order in Windows Explorer was simple alphabetical (so ‘1’, ‘11’, ‘2’, ‘22’, ‘3’). Then natural sort order was introduced and remained the default for the operating system ever since (so ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘11’, ‘22’).
However, the sorting order for other software can be very different, because it is not a system wide setting. That is why you see these differences across different programs.
I agree with you that it would make more sense to use natural sort in RawTherapee. How easy it is to implement I have not looked into.
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hacking DT code?
I guess the answer is no, you can’t have list in true chronological order.
“True chronological order” would imply that exif data is used instead of the filename. IMHO the solution is, to always use something like yyyymmdd as the date part (even including dashes or hyphens or something like that, but always year then month then day) and 6 digits like hhmmss for the time (always in the sequence hours, minutes, seconds). This would work on all operating systems and in all applications.
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The trick is to prepend the exif/date taken to the filename, permitting to list photos in all apps from different cameras in chronological order, if you take care to synchronise
them
.
Well, if it’s too much of a programming hassle to set RT up to do this, it’s not a big deal. Now that I understand what’s going on, I can just search for what I need. It’s simply a minor inconvenience. As I said, this is the first time I’ve ever run across this, both in RT and AS. No other software has ever done this, and my digital image and scans records go all the way back into the 90s, so this really threw me for a loop.
So if this is a programming hassle, no big deal. I would much rather see you folks concentrate on any potential bugs, or improving and adding feature and processes to the app.
Thanks again, everyone, for your time, and now I can concentrate on learning the ins and outs of RT.
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It seems you are a Windows user? Have you always been? If so, this surprises me, because, like I said, natural sorting was only introduced with Windows XP in 2001. Any Windows version before that was not able to do what you ask, so if you used Explorer back in the days, you must have had the same issue.
How old versions of image editing software handled things I do not know, but iirc it was pretty common to use OS native elements, which then would also not have natural sorting.
In any case, I think this might be a very nice thing for RawTherapee to have. I’ll put it on the list. Thanks for bringing it up!
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