Sort files and folders separately, Folders *last*

[Cripple-resistant]

Hello,

Familiarizing myself with Multi Commander and it looks like a solid software.

There are a few things which are quite annoying/frustrating though.
For example:
There is an option: "Sort files and folders separately, Folders first"
Personally I navigate the directory structure using the tree and
when it is time to access/manipulate files, the folders being listed first
are right in the way of the files so it would be good to also have an option:
"Sort files and folders separately, Folders last"

Would that be possible?
How much time would it take for such option to be available in MC?

Many thanks in advance,
Best regards

[Cripple-resistant]

Sad not to have even received a short "yes" or "no" answer after a month 

It looks that the author(s) is currently allocating very little resource (if any) on Multi Commander,
that Multi Commander development has slowed down to a crawl and that MC is probably close to
or already in abandonware state.

Sad state of affairs because Multi Commander looked promising.

Fortunately I have found other similar projects where support and development are still active.

Hopefully Multi Commander author(s) will re-activate their project at some point in the future or
transfer its development and support to people who have the willingness and time to work on it.

Best regards

[Mathias (Author)]

I actually missed this question.

Might be possible to add an option like. I add it to the list, and if it is not to time consumine I might be able to add it.

And No..  MC is not abandonen. I know it almost look like it.  BUT the time I can spend on it is less then before becuse of my day job.
Also I been working an some fundamental changes that have taken a lot longer them estimated. since it was a lot more complicated to implement then planned.
When that change are in place add some other major features will be easier. I think..

[Cripple-resistant]

Great news 
1. You are still working on the project;
2. You are able to answer questions very fast if/when you want to;
3. You have put my feature request in your to-do list.
Hence my 3 smileys!

I have a few other feature requests but I will take my time before submitting them to you
as I don't want to overload you with to-do items right now as you have indeed unfortunately
currently allocated meager resources to Multi Commander.

But I would be grateful if you could implement the "Folders last" option asap,
that would bring such a big improvement to MC ergonomics

In terms of MC resource allocation, you are obviously a talented person who is
surely in demand for more financially-rewarding projects/jobs than MC and
that is fair enough that you've decided to allocate only a small fraction of your
precious time to MC dev.

But then why not bring some trusted people in your MC development team?
You could have them work on specific parts of the software for you and/or
help you with MC support.
This would help you boost both MC development and your project managing skills.
Have you thought about this?

Many thanks in advance for a quick reply regarding my suggestion about bringing
more people in your MC dev team,
Best regards

[Mathias (Author)]

Well the notification of new comments are sometimes lost among the the spam

But then why not bring some trusted people in your MC development team?
You could have them work on specific parts of the software for you and/or
help you with MC support.
This would help you boost both MC development and your project managing skills.
Have you thought about this?

Even if you find people wanting to code for free, It would require a lot of time to teach and manager it.
Going open source is not really and option for various reason. Also just because a project is open source does not mean that a lot of people want to work on it for free.
Most open source project only have contributes from the original author.  Only a very few project got contributions from a wider group. Specially complex programs like this.
So Sorry, going that way is not a option

[Cripple-resistant]

Thank you for your quick answers, very appreciated indeed

Regarding involving people in your dev team, you could think of smarter ways than
simply opening the whole source and waiting for some random people to contribute.

For example, quickly browsing through the forum, we can see that there are quite a
few requests about directory/file sorting (including my own request).

So, what you could do for example, is putting the code related to directory/file sorting into a DLL.

To find people interested in helping you with the development of MC, you could also simply browse
through the Multi Command forum users and make a short list of people who you think could maybe
help you (because they intervene a lot, are well-articulated, seem to have some technical knowledge
and maybe are themselves developers...). Then you could drop an email to that short-list of people
and ask them if they have some (C++ or whatever language(s) MC is coded in) dev skills and if they
would be interested to help you. Then if you get some positive answer(s) from any of these people,
after briefing and agreement you could for example send (one of) them the code of the
directory/file sorting DLL for them to work on it (+ all necessary header/object/binary/project/etc... files to
compile/link with the rest of the MC software)
Once they are done with a particular task you requested from them, you could quickly review/test their code
and release it if/when you think it's OK.
That would probably also be fun and motivating for you to work with other people, maybe you could even
learn some new things along the way, etc...

Advantages of that way of doing things:
* You only have to provide a very small portion of your code;
* The person/people working on your software only have to understand that small portion of code to be able to
work on your project;
* You select the people who work on your project;
* You project-manage people and have fun working on MC with like-minded people;
* If you are not satisfied with someone's contribution you can simply stop accepting their contribution;
* Etc...

Do you think such an approach would be suitable and enjoyable for you?

[Mathias (Author)]

Sorry. It is not as easy like that,  MC is a very complex there is almost over 1M lines of codes. (3rd party code not included)
Also It would require to much time to manage and such. And everything that somebody else wrote needed to be reviewed and stuff.  It would take so much time.