Author Topic: What I want to have added to Multi Commander  (Read 10550 times)

Crash+Burn

  • Junior Member
  • **
  • Posts: 33
    • View Profile
What I want to have added to Multi Commander
« on: June 10, 2015, 00:43:59 »
There are 3 things I need to use TC for:
There are 2 things I miss:
  • Custom Menus (File, Edit, View, etc)
  • Custom ToolBar(s) - that can be switched between, and that can be linked to a ToolBar icon so it drops down as a menu with icons.

I would choose Custom Toolbars with drop-down menu's that link to additional Toolbars, but I've mentioned that in the past --- I don't think it's on the table...

Secondarily, I would agree with some of the other posters in regards to Flatten (all or selected) Folders.

Thirdly, I would suggest a slight redesign to Multi-Rename, so that one could add additional [Search] [Replace] fields beyond the allowed 4.

NOTE: EmEditor has a "Batch Regex" Find/Replace, that allows you to add as many search/replace steps as you need, and save the steps out as a .tsv. It has made text transformation so much easier, as you can write much more specific regex statements, and chain those together --- as opposed to writing one or two extremely complex regular expressions - that break easily and are much harder to read and write.

« Last Edit: June 10, 2015, 00:49:42 by Crash+Burn »

Mathias (Author)

  • Administrator
  • VIP Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4271
    • View Profile
    • Multi Commander
Re: What I want to have added to Multi Commander
« Reply #1 on: June 10, 2015, 08:19:29 »
A)
1. There is a API.. Just grab a book on C++ and you can add it :)
2. As said in the link. It is in the work. however. All other FM that have this are doing this different, So if you are used to this working one way. not everybody that want this are going to be happy, there are so many minor issues with this that will work different.  But after the alpha version with this comes out it is up to users to decide how some things should work
3. Problem with this is that, if you ask 10 users how they like this to work you get 10 answers. So the hardest part of this is to decide how it should work.
That take so much time to figure out all the use cases and corner cases. That I have not had the time. But if I get a good design on how this should work. So I do not have to do all that work I can add it.

b)
1. It is possible to ADD new menu and add UserDefinedCommands to that. and UDC can call internal commands. so you can add items to new menu.
But customizing current menus are a different thing. The problem here is that MC is built using many extension/plugins and they add there own menus items. So adding so the menus can be customized would require a lot of redesigned. But if there are A LOT of request for this then maybe I can spend the time on it.

2. Almost the same issues as menu. Extension own and setup there own toolbar and breaking that up causing issues. and require a lot of architectural redesign

Multi-Rename. There are plans for some changes there.

Crash+Burn

  • Junior Member
  • **
  • Posts: 33
    • View Profile
Re: What I want to have added to Multi Commander
« Reply #2 on: June 11, 2015, 23:32:55 »
EDIT: Rewritten for clarity.

As far as the 2 things I miss (custom Menu's and Toolbars). I don't think MC needs custom Menu's (The Menu's are fairly well organized). It is a nice thing to have - and it's likely the easiest of the lot to implement --- as parsing what-amounts-to an INI file to generate a menu's contents is fairly straight forward --- since AFAIK most of MC's internal functions are exposed to the API.  And while I do miss custom Toolbars. I think MC's bottom Button Bar could very likely fill those functional needs with much less work, as it would take advantage of the existing infrastructure.

Requirements:
  • Multiple Button Bars.
  • Hooks that can cause Button Bars to change, e.g. via Keyboard (Hotkeys|Modifier Keys), Mouse or directory changes|paths.
  • Dialog to manage Button Bars.

There was a tool that I used to use, TwinKey, you could set folder paths (regex|glob) filters, and trigger events|changes.
E.g. One might filter on: "C:\DATA\Music\*\*\*", which would match: "C:\DATA\Music\ACDC\1980_Back in Black\" and change the tab color|tab icon or the background image of the file-panel, etc.

If we also consider:
1) Multiple Bars.
2) Multiple Root|Parent Bars.
3) with Child-Bars, that can inherit Buttons from the Root|Parent.

If you set the first row of a Root Button Bar as "Default Buttons", then it's Children BB's would automatically inherit and display those buttons.  So that when you change|toggle between various Button Bars you would be able to, in effect, cause contextual changes to the MC interface.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2015, 04:44:37 by Crash+Burn »

Crash+Burn

  • Junior Member
  • **
  • Posts: 33
    • View Profile
Re: What I want to have added to Multi Commander
« Reply #3 on: June 11, 2015, 23:43:10 »
As far as #3) Synchronize Dirs is concerned --- if I didn't have a TC license I would probably just use a standalone tool for such, when I need it.

Especially, if you've forgotten that the folders you are syncing contain junctions, hardlinks, or symlinks. Good luck fixing the resulting clusterfuck that TC will create before it's done mangling your folders.

Mathias (Author)

  • Administrator
  • VIP Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4271
    • View Profile
    • Multi Commander
Re: What I want to have added to Multi Commander
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2015, 08:47:50 »
EDIT: Rewritten for clarity.

As far as the 2 things I miss (custom Menu's and Toolbars). I don't think MC needs custom Menu's (The Menu's are fairly well organized). It is a nice thing to have - and it's likely the easiest of the lot to implement --- as parsing what-amounts-to an INI file to generate a menu's contents is fairly straight forward --- since AFAIK most of MC's internal functions are exposed to the API.  And while I do miss custom Toolbars. I think MC's bottom Button Bar could very likely fill those functional needs with much less work, as it would take advantage of the existing infrastructure.

Requirements:
  • Multiple Button Bars.
  • Hooks that can cause Button Bars to change, e.g. via Keyboard (Hotkeys|Modifier Keys), Mouse or directory changes|paths.
  • Dialog to manage Button Bars.

There was a tool that I used to use, TwinKey, you could set folder paths (regex|glob) filters, and trigger events|changes.
E.g. One might filter on: "C:\DATA\Music\*\*\*", which would match: "C:\DATA\Music\ACDC\1980_Back in Black\" and change the tab color|tab icon or the background image of the file-panel, etc.

If we also consider:
1) Multiple Bars.
2) Multiple Root|Parent Bars.
3) with Child-Bars, that can inherit Buttons from the Root|Parent.

If you set the first row of a Root Button Bar as "Default Buttons", then it's Children BB's would automatically inherit and display those buttons.  So that when you change|toggle between various Button Bars you would be able to, in effect, cause contextual changes to the MC interface.

You got kind of a custom toolbar with the quick launch bar. But you have to create user defined command if you want to place internal commands there.
I been planing and maybe adding a variation of that toolbar that would allow internal commands directly.

Button panel.
You can change how many rows of button you want and every row can have 4 actions. (Entire button panel switches if Ctrl, Shift, Ctrl+Shift is hold.. if you not disabled that)
You want more button bars. hmm Not sure if there are any room for them.
Not sure what you mean with root/parent bars.. is it if you press one button, the action for that button then "loads/sets" and entire new layout for all of the buttons in the button panel ?  So you can have multiple layout that are shown in normal state and not just in the alternative (Ctrl, Shift, Ctrl+Shift states.)
This might be possible to create this with script hmm Or almost. A button panel can be reloaded in realtime. A script command to reload a button panel file might be needed.. The internals for it should (maybe) already be in place.

Sync Dirs.
I'm all for implementing a sync feature. Problem is that there are many corner cases issues with sync that needs to handled, like junctions and symlinks as you mention. One problem is that I do not use any sync tool my self (OneDrive/DropBox is enough for my needs) So I don't know all the strange issues/needs people have with sync.  Finding all that takes a lot of research and testing and that takes a lot of time. So designing a sync feature require more time then I got at the moment.  Like how should a sync feature work. should it match by files names, time, hash,  what to do with conflict.  show diff for conflict and how to do that. Does it do everything automatic, Do the user set up some kind of profile or is it semi manual (Sync panel left with panel right) and so on and much more.
Just the design to get everything in require more time then I got at the moment. But if anyone (I do not mean you.. Anyone who reads this) write up a 'design' and how something like this should work. What options and subfeatures it should have and how it should handle different issues that comes up. Then implementing it should be possible.

xian

  • Junior Member
  • **
  • Posts: 30
    • View Profile
Re: What I want to have added to Multi Commander
« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2015, 15:00:41 »
For syncing I use http://ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en (kinda left to right only mode). Have lots of options on different cases - maybe worth a look.