25 Requests...

[Bujim]

Hello,
I tried muCommander and I did not find several needful features. So, I am requesting some of them.

1. Enable optional right-mouse selection mode.
2. Enable standard toolbar customizing (icons turning on/off; icons movement; separators inserting).
3. Right-side buttons are not accessible if icon size is big or/and program window is not maximized. So, enable toolbar scrolling or icons "hyphenation" into second line (more acceptable).
4. Implement 24/32/64/128 pixel icon sets instead of 100%/125%/150%... sizes.
5. Enable using of custom icons.
6. Implement icons in the command menu.
7. Enable existing shortcuts customizing and user shortcuts creating.
8. Enable optional "only one application window" limitation.
9. Enable custom toolbar/buttons creating f.e. for programs startup.
10. System fonts should be used by default.
11. Calculate and display folder size in corresponding column on SPACE pressing.
12. Implement Find File/Folder and Find Text commands with support of wildcards and archives.
13. Implement tabs displaying in Tree mode.
14. Enable optional whole file name selection (with extension) on pick.
15. Snap pointer to 50/50 position on tabs separator movement.
16. Enable display color assigning by file type.
17. Enable system (hidden) files hiding.
18. Implement Split File / Join File commands.
19. Enable optional tabs path "symmetry". If user selects the same drive for tab then default path should be equal to another tab. In other words start Set Same Folder command on drive change. See f.e. TotalCommander behavior.
20. Select whole folder name on pick. Do not stop on point.
21. Enable browsing through Local Network. Add Local Network item to drop-down drives button.
22. Enable Network folders connection as local drives.
23. Show drive buttons for both tabs. Mark drives buttons with corresponding icons (hard drives, cd-dvd drives, flash drives, network connections etc.)
24. Implement Root Folder button ("\") for quick access to drive root.
25. Do not limit UP browsing with drive root. On next step drives list should be displayed. Then move to Desktop level: My Computer, Network, Desktop Items etc.

Thank you.

[ifezs001]

I can agree with all the listed request. +1

I also suggest a few things:

-Tabs for mucommander like freecommander or Total Commander or Unreal commander
-Multi rename tool with the options like Total COmmander or Unreal COmmander
-Minimize the file movement options, but it in the background.
-Able to view the contents of the cd/dvd image files like with a plugin in Total Commander or Unreal Commander
-Space on a folder to display its size

-Mounted (Under Linux/Unix) drives viewable as a simple button list like in Gnome Commander
-Existing drives viewable as a simple button list like in Total COmmander or in Freecommander
-Command line or terminal line in bottom part of the panes like Total Commander or Frecommander

[Ngezi]

I agree,

and I'd love to see file moving and copying within one window by drag&drop, also to the parent dir by dropping on '..'
i totally agree with the above points of
- having the option to hide the copy/ move window to the background to be able to continue working.
- being able to calculate the sizes of all folders in the view. either pressing space or shift-ctrl-enter (total commander style)

[rabside]

Great requests!!
+1 here!

[Nicolas]

Oh god, it's going to take me *hours* to reply to that...

Let me give it a shot, though.

Enable optional right-mouse selection mode

Not sure what you mean by that. Use right-clicks to select files? Mmm, that's not necessarily a bad idea, but it would disable the contextual menu. Do you have suggestion on how to work around that?

Enable standard toolbar customizing

We actually have some code for that, it's just not yet ready to be released. But yes, we agree with you on that one and are working on it.

Right-side buttons visibility

Mm. Good point. Let us look into that, we'd never realised this.

Icon size

Not as easy as it sounds, since the icon set we're using only has one size. We'll let you know if we can find a clever solution.

Custom icons

That's actually planned, although it requires a substantial amount of work for a relatively minor feature. I wouldn't hold my breath, but we have discussed that a few times already.

Icons in the command menu

That's already been suggested and we're considering it - we'd never even thought about it since a lot of muCommander development happens under OS X, which traditionally doesn't use icons in menus. I'm not sure whether it'll happen, but we keep an open mind about it

Customised shortcuts

You can actually already do that, even if it requires you to hack away at XML files. Edit action_keymap.xml (see this for information on how to locate it).

Enable optional "only one application window" limitation.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Prevent users from creating more than one window? Why not, but what's the rationale behind that?

Enable custom toolbar/buttons creating f.e. for programs startup.

That's part of the work we have yet to release, but we already have code for toolbar and command bar customisation.

System fonts should be used by default.

That rather depends on the theme you're using, but if you select "native" the first time muCommander boots or select it in Preferences / Appearances / Themes, it should be the case. If it's not, could you let me know about it so that I can investigate?

Calculate and display folder size in corresponding column on SPACE pressing.

That's been requested a few times, yes. It's in the list of features that we have to decide on, but we might very well end up doing it.

Implement Find File/Folder and Find Text commands

Definitely, yes. I'm not sure when this will happen, but it's in our TODO list.

Implement tabs displaying in Tree mode.

We actually intend to implement full tabbed browsing at some point. It's a bit of work, what with possible thread synchronisation issues, but it *is* in our TODO list.

Enable optional whole file name selection (with extension) on pick.

Not sure about that one - we're not keen on having preferences for defaults if we can avoid it. Is there a particular reason why you dislike the default behaviour? It's our experience that it's the correct action more often than not, do you have a different experience?

Snap pointer to 50/50 position on tabs separator movement.

Mm, why? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of allowing users to resize tabs?
I might very well not have understood your suggestion, could you give me a concrete example?

Enable display color assigning by file type.

We already have something like that, provided you don't want to define your own types. It's possible to configure different colors depending on whether a file is a folder, a plain file, an archive, a hidden file or a symbolic link (Preferences / Appearance / Themes / Edit / Folder Pane / Active).
Is that what you had in mind?

Enable system (hidden) files hiding.

That's already implemented: View / Show (hide) hidden files.

Implement Split File / Join File commands.

That's also been suggested a few times and we're actively considering it. Can you suggest UI software that does it "right" so that we can get some implementation ideas?

Enable optional tabs path "symmetry"

That's something that we have been thinking about, but we don't really like the idea of entering an "alternate" browsing mode.
Isn't the "Open in both panels" action good enough?

Select whole folder name on pick

Good point. That's probably a bug, to be honest. We'll fix that as soon as possible.

Enable browsing through Local Network

If that ever happens, it'll be a long way down the line: this would require us to write some windows specific native code, something we try to steer well clear of.

Show drive buttons for both tabs.

If I understand your suggestion properly, the answer is the same as for the previous one: that's system specific code, if we do it, it'll be in a while, once we're satisfied with the multiplatform aspects of muCommander.

Implement Root Folder button ("\") for quick access to drive root.

Clever.
We'll not do that by default straight away - we'd need to have system dependant shortcuts (\ for windows, / for other OSes), but I'm taking a note of this, it could be quite handy.
In the meantime, you can either use the current shortcut (shift backspace) or edit it in action_keymap.xml

Do not limit UP browsing with drive root.

That would be system dependant development. So, not for the moment, I'm afraid.

Tabs

Absolutely, this is in our plans. Can't give you an ETA, but we definitely want to do that.

Multi rename tool

Absolutely, you can find it in File / Batch Rename

Backgroun file operations

Absolutely, that's in our TODO list. Not sure when we'll get around to doing it, as it involves a fairly large rework of our threading code, but it's definitely an important one and our most requested feature.

Mounted (Under Linux/Unix) drives viewable as a simple button list

I'm not sure I understand this. Do you mean like what happens when you click on the drive button (next to the location bar)? If not, do you have a screenshot of what you mean somewhere?

Command line or terminal line in bottom part of the panes

That's an ongoing discussion, we still aren't decided on whether we want to do that or not. You're not the first one to suggest it, so we are considering it, but I really can't tell you whether it'll happen or not.

Phew. I think that's pretty much it. Did I miss anything?

Cheers,
Nicolas

[axel]

I'm new on this board, so probably the topic I'm bringing was discussed.
What are the plans for ALT+F7 (search files functionality)?

[nightflow]

"Command line or terminal line in bottom part of the panes"

Hi,
Just wanted to congratulate you on the recent release. Huge improvement! Just moved to mucommander on Mac from Total Commander on XP and wanted to know if we could get a quick way to open a Command line or Terminal.app in the current working dir of the panel. I never used the bottom cmd line in Total Cmdr ever since I found out that I can open a full cmdline window quickly. I used to be able to do ALT+C,D however now that I am on a Mac, I'd like to be able to open Terminal.app in the CWD. Is there a way to do this now? If not, could this be part of the todo list?

Many thanks.

[Nicolas]

Hey,

Thanks for the congratulations and I'm glad you're happy with the recent release :)

As for the two requests I haven't answered yet:

1) Search functionality
There are definitely plans for this feature. This being a project we work on in our spare time, however, I can't really give you an estimate of when it'll be done, or even of when it'll be started.
It's one of these features that we *know* we must implement, along with background file operations and tabbed browsing, and that will hopefully make it into 0.8.5. They're just large amount of work and life has a tendency to get in the way when you're starting your own business on the side :)

2) Opening Terminal.app
Unfortunately, that's not possible just yet. I'm guessing that if you add an "open -a Terminal.app $f" entry in your commands.xml file, you'll be able to achieve it by right clicking on a directory and using the "Open with..." menu, but that's not quite what you're after, is it?

There is a solution if you know your way around Java code: it should be fairly straightforward to implement a subclass of MuAction that opens the current directory in whatever software of your choice (in fact, there's already such an action: Reveal in Finder). If you were to write this action and put the resulting bytecode in muCommander's classpath, you should be able to map it to whatever keyboard shortcut you fancy.

I'm afraid that's the only way I can think of at the moment. I've always found the built-in terminal (ctrl-r) to be enough for my needs, so I've never actually thought about that issue much.

Cheers,
Nicolas

[axel]

Thanks for answering.
I'm actually thinking to implement the search function and the command bar myself (I find extremely frustrating not having a shell other than mc in Snow Leopard - krusader was not installable, and probably if I manage to install it, it will crash every 3 seconds), so I wanted to ask about how things work with the patch.
- if I make it, and it's decent quality-wise, will it be integrated in the trunk or shall I consider it my own personal branch and I will distribute it myself? (it will not be muCommander, but something else, like muCommanderX). It matters before I start working, in order to maintain as much as possible the code style
- I really enjoy coding Java 5 rather than 1.4 (generics and stuff). Is it really necesarily for you guys to keep backward compatibility? Just imagine what you can do with java.nio package for speeding up the I/O...
- I'm not that good with Swing interfaces. Any cues on that? Ideally, it would be nice to have the sketch of the Swing interface done by you guys. It will not break the style of the project. But I think I can handle it anyway if I need to.


What I am trying to do functionality-wise:
- standard stuff (recursive search, search by text or by regex, filters for file type, for file length, date, etc)
- exclusions (so that I can easily avoid .svn folders when I search)
- virtual result list - take the result list and put it into the main pane
- a friendlier result pane (friendlier than grep), with snippets, like google does on web search
- plugins (parse text from different file formats)
- eventually some Apache Lucene integration