No it is not, you can actually change the default sort direction to ‘asc’ or ‘desc’ as follows:

force cakephp (using version 1.2.5) sort direction to ‘DESC’:

echo $paginator->sort(’Rating’, ‘rating’, array(’url’ => array(’direction’ => ‘desc’))).’ | ‘;

or flip it in your view yourself for a column:

$directionCreated = ‘desc’;
if ($paginator->sortKey(’Modelname’) == ‘Modelname.created’) {
if ($paginator->sortDir(’Modelname’) == ‘desc’ ) {
$directionCreated = ‘asc’;
}
}

echo $paginator->sort(’Datum’, ‘created’, array(’url’ => array(’direction’ => $directionCreated)));

This is actually documented in the CakePHP documentation: http://book.cakephp.org/view/656/Methods but not really clear that you can use it like this.

regards,
Steve