I know there are ways to write custom sorters, but sometimes the sort order is purely server-side data. For instance a task tracker might have a task grid with a column for 'priority'. Values are 'high', 'medium', 'low'. We don't want to sort them alphabetically and we don't want to embed those values into a javascript custom sorter, since they might vary for each installation and language.

One approach might be to create a hidden column which is used for sorting. Possible, but cumbersome and conflicts with using the neat column show/hide plugin. Another is to change the values to “1-high”, “2-medium”, “3-low”. Ugh.

Ideally, I'd like to transport some metadata along with the table data: