Pages: Overriding database settings for ordering per category

[Meddysong]

Unless I'm overlooking something, I'm confused about an aspect of Pages.

I can decide on a per-database basis what the ordering will be like - whether the record ID, publish date or a field determines the ordering, for example.

What I'm confused about is how to overrule this for individual categories. It's possible, after all, to use separate themes, allow new records to post to a forum even if that's not allowed for the database as a whole, override permissions etc. Am I missing something?

I'm asking because I really would like to get around having several different databases when only one would do. In my example I have a series of articles, and I'd like to use categories to differentiate between them but otherwise have them be part of the same database. I have things which I want to keep in their publishing order (because they're historical journals and numbered, so ascending with the earliest on top), others which need to be in alphabetical order (because they're encyclopedia entries), others where I want newest on top (YouTube vids, etc), others in which I want comments to bump the article to the top, and so. I'd like one single database holding all this stuff, rather than one holding the various records that need to be ordered by x, another for those ordered by y, etc.

Am I missing something obvious?

If I'm not, would there be a workaround? Is it possible, for example, to add the ordering information to a template, along the lines of "if this is category_x, order by date" etc?