attributes sort order not working in shopping cart

I have a number of different attributes per product and the order of these attributes works fine in the product listing. However, for each product listed in the shopping cart the attributes order is not by sort order but by order id.
In the shopping cart template the attribute list is generated from the $product['attribute'] array and this does not contain any sort order data. Is this a bug when the product array is generated? or will I need to create some code to provide a separate attribute array that can be sorted with option sort order?

Thanks

That isn't a typical error ...

Have you an URL to a Product that is doing this so that we can see this issue?

I am still developing my site locally, so don't yet have a url to offer. Maybe thought someone had come across this before. I can finish development over the next couple of weeks and post a url then.

Thanks

That would be of help as I cannot picture what is happening to break how this normally works on the sorts ...