the_category() sorts _only_ by category ID

[skippy]

I have a post that lives in three categories: "Technology", "Free Software", and "WordPress". The "Free Software" category is a sub-cat of "Technology". My blog displays the categories this way:

Free Software, WordPress, Technology

Due to the way I've shuffled and re-arranged my categories over time, the_category() displays categories in an appearantly haphazard way.

I would like to have options to:

• group parent/child categories
• sort alphabetically by category name
• sort ascending or descending
• do all of the above at once! (sort top-level categories reverse alpha by category name, and display child categories immediately after each of their parent categories)

This should probably be a new function, preferably in a plugin, since this has not been widely requested