Hi: I asked Bert privately and he recommended posting what I asked/said to him to the list. My comment/question was that I looked at the code and didn't actually see an ordered factor being created. So my guess is that there is a confusion with the use of the term "ordered". I'm not clear on whether the OP means just ordered alphabetically or actually ordered as in a truly ordered factor. My guess is that he means alphabetically which means it's probably just the preference of the person who wrote the code to order them in the way he/she did. As far as I can tell, the code never actually creates a truly ordered factor. [[alternative HTML version deleted]]