Hi,
thanks for your post and the suggestions! Great to hear that you like the plugin!
If you want, you can rate TablePress here in the plugin directory. That would be cool.
1. Yes, this is also bothering me. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found a good solution to this, that is both easy to implement and easy to use for a user. But I'll keep investigating :-)
2. Can you clarify which sorting you mean here? The one on the "Edit" screen or that on the frontend, when a visitor sees the table? The one on the "Edit" screen is indeed not that flexible as it can not distinguish between different data types.
Regards,
Tobias