Since sort order is lexicographic, lock files with ".lock" appended will still typically be next to the files when listed.  The only exception I can think of is if there are other related files with the same base name, perhaps with a different stacked extension or suffix (like ~)

It is not the case that the current lock file names are always listed next to the files they are clocking:

mgsloan@treetop:~/test$ ls -la                                                                                                      
total 8                                                                                                                              
drwxrwxr-x  2 mgsloan mgsloan 4096 Nov  9 16:36  .                                                                                  
drwxr-xr-x 57 mgsloan mgsloan 4096 Nov  9 16:35  ..
-rw-rw-r--  1 mgsloan mgsloan    0 Nov  9 16:36  .#test.md
-rw-rw-r--  1 mgsloan mgsloan    0 Nov  9 16:36 '#.test.md'
-rw-rw-r--  1 mgsloan mgsloan    0 Nov  9 16:35  test.md

On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 2:24 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> From: Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se>
> Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2019 10:12:11 +0100
> Cc: Michael Sloan <mgsloan@gmail.com>, Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>, 23033@debbugs.gnu.org
>
> > I think we should only consider adding punctuation characters, because
> > that would ensure these lock files are displayed right next to the
> > files they lock, like today.  Moving the lock files away of the files
> > they lock in the directory listing would be a disadvantage, IMO.
>
> On this MacOS machine, I see the following:
>
> $ ls -al
> total 8
> drwxr-xr-x  11 skangas  staff   352 Nov  9 10:05 .
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 skangas  staff    33 Nov  9 10:05 .#foo ->
> skangas@example.org.795
> drwxr-xr-x  50 skangas  staff  1600 Nov  9 10:03 ..
> -rw-r--r--   1 skangas  staff     0 Nov  9 10:03 a
> -rw-r--r--   1 skangas  staff     0 Nov  9 10:03 e
> -rw-r--r--   1 skangas  staff     3 Nov  9 10:05 foo
> -rw-r--r--   1 skangas  staff     0 Nov  9 10:03 i
> -rw-r--r--   1 skangas  staff     0 Nov  9 10:03 z
>
> In other words, the lock file is not next to the file it locks.  Are
> you seeing something else?

Yes.

Is the above Gnu 'ls'?  And what is your locale?

> How would the ordering differ with a suffix like ".lock" compared to
> "#" or some other punctuation character?  I would have thought that it
> would be very similar.  Maybe I'm missing something.

The default file sort order in UTF-8 locales ignores punctuation
characters.