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     This keyword defines  how the area  list should be  sorted. You can
     override  the  default  setting  from  the  commandline with the -S
     switch.

     The <sortspec> can be composed of the following types:

         A   Sort by aka.
         B   Sort by board number.
         D   Sort by description.
         E   Sort by echoid.
         F   Sorts all "fuzzy search" matches first.
         G   Sort by group (if any).
         M   Sorts all marked areas first.
         O   Sort by original order.
         P   Sort by personal mail.
         T   Sort by type (in the order net, echo, local).
         U   Sort by unread messages (try it!).
         X   Sort by msgbase type.
         Y   Sorts all areas with "new" mail first.
         Z   Sort by msgbase path.
         -   Descending sort (largest first).
         +   Ascending sort (smallest first) (default).

     In practice 'M' and 'Y' will usually give the same result,  because
     GoldED automatically marks scanned areas if they contain new mail.

       Example:

         AREALISTSORT T-U+E

     This sorts ascending by Type, descending by Unread (that is,  areas
     with the most unread messages comes first) and ascending by  Echoid
     (in case two areas have the same number of unread msgs).

     By default  no sorting  is done,  and all  areas are  listed in the
     order  they  were  found  (unless  sorting  was  specified  with an
     AREAFILE keyword). However, the configuration examples all make use
     of the Unread sorting  type. This is a  very useful way of  sorting
     areas, because it keeps all the areas with mail together.

     Personally I  now sort  my areas  like this:  "AREALISTSORT FYTUE".
     This puts all areas with new mail first, then sorts these into type
     (net/echo/local), then  into number  of new  msgs and  finally into
     echoid. The 'F' at the start enables fuzzy match sorting, which  is
     very handy when looking for an echoid containing a particular word.
     Let's say I want a list of all GOLDED echoes. I can now simply type
     "GOLDED" and then the  arealist automatically sorts itself  so that
     all echoes with an echoid containing "GOLDED" comes first :-)

     The 'X'  sort type  sorts areas  according to  msgbase type, in the
     following order:

         Hudson
         Goldbase
         JAM
         Squish
         OPUS *.MSG
         FTS-1 *.MSG
         Ezycom
         PCBoard

     The 'X' and  'Z' sort types  were implemented for  internal use, to
     optimize area scanning speed. When scanning areas, GoldED starts by
     sorting  the  arealist   using  the  sortspec   defined  with   the
     AREASORTSCAN keyword.