Author Topic: From MC Tab Sessions to MC Work Sessions?  (Read 5241 times)

Heinz Eisenbeiss

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From MC Tab Sessions to MC Work Sessions?
« on: January 02, 2020, 11:24:24 »
Hi MC community.
In the hope of getting some ideas or directions from more advanced MC users here, this is the problem I try to solve...  ::)

I am looking for way to map my most important PC workflows into the MC user interface. E.g. photo processing, eBook management, programming, etc. Each of these workflows typically involve (a) multiple explorer folders and (b) multiple tools or scripts.

The Tab Session feature in MC might be quite useful for (a), one session for each workflow.
For (b), my idea is to map the respective session tools into the button panel of MC.
To do this I would need a different set of buttons for each Tab Session.

Thinking about my options, this is what I came up with:
  • Is this behavior already possible and I just couldn’t find it? (MC documentation: “Tab Session Manager - This page have not been written yet.”)
  • Should I put a request to the MC Author (Mathias) and wait and hope? (This might be an outstanding feature to move on from file management to workflow management)
  • Maybe there is a workaround with MC scripting, like “If Tab Session = XXX then set button panel to XXX-buttons”?
  • I understand Tab Sessions are limited in number so if I want a higher number of sessions I might have to do this at MC start with “-F=<filename.ini>”.
Or would there be a totally different approach?
Your thoughts or experiences are highly appreciated.

Mathias (Author)

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Re: From MC Tab Sessions to MC Work Sessions?
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2020, 12:02:45 »
The Documentation is lacking.. It is very time consuming to write, And I have not had time. My time is limited.. Sorry about that.

You find TabSession in  File > Tab Sessions
You can configure to activate them on hotkey but you can also activate them using UserDefinedCommands that you connect to button in the button panel. (http://multicommander.com/docs/multiscript/functions/tabpanel for MultiScript command.
and you can also access the CustomCommand  using "MC.RunCmd ID=Core.xxxx"  The core command you find that in Customize Keyboard Setup)

You can have a lot of session I think the limit is 70.


Heinz Eisenbeiss

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Re: From MC Tab Sessions to MC Work Sessions - SOLVED
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2020, 14:46:45 »
To let you know, with my basic knowledge of AutoIt programming and investment of a couple of hours I created a script that does the job.
Set Multi Commander Work Session context, consisting of…
  • Session specific button area
  • Session specific explorer panels
  • Session specific title in title bar

I launch the script via MC Button (external command) to change over between different sessions.
Here is what the script does...
  • Terminate running MC instances und copy the session specific multibutton.xml into Config folder
  • Launch MC again with session specific .ini file and session title (command line -F and -T)

So if you have to solve similar challenges you might benefit from my approach above.

Mathias (Author)

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Re: From MC Tab Sessions to MC Work Sessions?
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2020, 15:02:00 »
Built in Session support do not swap out the button panel configuration. It only swap what tabs should be open and some configuration.
If you want totally different setups you need to do tricky stuff like you do or run multiple instances of MC in portable mode.