Messages

1

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: What I want to have added to Multi Commander

« 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.

2

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: What I want to have added to Multi Commander

« 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.

3

Feature Requests and Suggestions / 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:

• Custom columns (that use WDX content plugins).
• SubDir Branch View. Forum link discussing: SubDir Branch View | FlatView | Flatten Files (virtual folders)
  
• Synchronize Dirs.

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.

4

Support and Feedback / Active Panel always left-side after using Multi-Rename extension

« on: January 04, 2015, 23:03:50 »

After activating the Multi-Rename extension, and using it, or closing it - and then either switching back to MC, or it auto-activating due to closing Multi-Rename:
The left-side panel is made active, even if it wasn't the panel the Multi-Rename extension was used for.

5

Support and Feedback / Regex Regex Regex!

« on: November 05, 2014, 21:46:21 »

Wooo Hoo regex in filters (search) AND selection!

And learned something, I had always thought "*.*" was a valid (if redundant) regex. Apparently only in tools that ignore the regex spec and just consider it ".*"

Anyways, very cool.

Regex Regex Regex!! Aaaahahahahaa!
--- [sounds like the disembodied spirit of 'Jack the Ripper' from "ST:TOS, "Wolf in the Fold" (S02E14)]

6

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: Drop Down Menu from QuickLaunchBar Icon

« on: November 05, 2014, 21:31:31 »

I was thinking how this could be accomplished with existing MC features, or with AHK.

With AHK one could create a listView (drop-down) at the mouse cursor, which could have MC commands in it - though I'm unsure if it's possible to send MC commands externally.

The other idea of how to do "drop down menus" was, IF beyond the existing (default) "Button Panel/Window", one could create Multiple Button Panels/Windows.

Each Panel would need it's own definable dimensions Row/Columns.
A dialog would be needed to manage the Button Panels (similiar to others MC uses).
Hotkeys (shortcuts) would need to be able to activate (show/hide) a given panel.
Perhaps a MC.ShowButtonPanel "Name|ID" command.

Given those things, one could assign a MC command to the users QuickLaunch to display a given Button Panel (which appears to recall it's last size and position).

Perhaps a checkbox on the panel itself, or within it's options to "Hide after use".

Probably more work than being able to display a Custom User Menu via a MC command though.

7

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: Drop Down Menu from QuickLaunchBar Icon

« on: October 25, 2014, 21:36:18 »

Sorry, I did NOT mean limited in what the FunctionBar can do.

I meant limited in that it relies on a set amount of space. Not what can be contained within a single [button].

A button that can have a drop-down menu could have 20+ items all by itself. Whereas the bottom function-bar with 20 buttons takes up a significant amount of space.

Basically, I have a lot of scripts (both AHK and CMD/Batch) that take various file inputs (selected, or whole folders) and currently within MC there isn't really a viable way to place those into the interface aside from a custom menu.

MC is one of the cleanest/functional/customizable File Managers that I have used, but the Function Bar detracts from that Clean Visual (uncluttered) Appearance.  I look at something like XYPlorer for instance and its Main Menu's are so cluttered with things that you might rarely (if ever) use to the point that it makes the menu's nearly unusable.

8

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Drop Down Menu from QuickLaunchBar Icon

« on: October 23, 2014, 21:07:02 »

We currently can define custom Menu's (awesome). Is there any possibility of similar functionality from a UserDefinedCommand on the QuickLaunchBar?

I see that some built-in commands on the Toolbar have drop-downs, and a few have right-click context-menu drop-downs.

Example:
1) Create a custom Menu: "MyCustomMenu1"
2) Choose an option to not display it on the MenuBar (File|Edit...)
3) Create a UserDefinedCommand that references the custom Menu "MyCustomMenu1"

So the custom menu would drop-down when the UserDefinedCommand button is clicked.


NOTE: The Function-bar is also functionally great -- what it exposes, enables and it's ability to switch states via modify keys (ctrl|shift|etc). Although it is definitely limited in what can be reasonably contained within it's various buttons, and becomes somewhat awkward to hide/show it when needed. As well as visually jarring when it jumps between states when you are just pressing a modifier key for something else.

CB.

Addenum: Is this something that could be implemented with MC's plugin architechture?

9

Support and Feedback / Re: Questions about Tabs

« on: October 23, 2014, 20:41:17 »

If you don't mind using AutoHotkey, this script for MultiCommander will enable scrolling through tabs with the ScrollWheel, and opening the drive from the DriveBar in a new tab.

Code: [Select]

#SingleInstance, Force
#Warn
#NoEnv
#InstallKeybdHook
#InstallMouseHook
SetTitleMatchMode, Regex
SetKeyDelay, 32, 32
ListLines, On

#ifWinActive ^Multi Commander v\d ahk_class ^Afx:00007FF77F9A0000:0$
/*
MultiCommander:
Open Drive in New Tab - from the DriveBar
*/
$MButton::
MouseGetPos, gxPos1, gyPos1, gWin, gControl
if( gControl == "ToolbarWindow321" )
{
Send, ^{t} ; New Tab
Send, {LButton}
return
}
Send, {MButton}
return


/*
MultiCommander:
Change Tabs with WheelUp|WheelDown when the mouse is NOT over the file panels.
*/
*$WheelUp::
*$WheelDown::
wheelKey:=substr(A_ThisHotkey, 3)
if( GetKeyState("RButton", "P") && watchWheel )
Send, % "{Blind}{LCtrl Down}" . (wheelKey == "WheelUp"? "+":"") . "{Tab}"
else
Send, % "{" . wheelKey . "}"
return

$RButton::
wheelKey:=""
MouseGetPos, gxPos1, gyPos1, gWin, gControl
if(RegExMatch(gControl, "^ZMULTILISTCTRL\d+$"))
{
Send, {Blind}{RButton Down}
KeyWait, RButton
Send, {Blind}{RButton Up}
return
}
watchWheel:=TRUE
KeyWait, RButton

if( !wheelKey )
Send, {Blind}{RButton}
Send, {Blind}{LCtrl Up}
watchWheel:=FALSE, wheelKey:=""
return

#ifWinActive


10

Support and Feedback / Re: Using external copiers, horizontal scrolling, flat view (and other queries)

« on: September 18, 2014, 23:43:03 »

- Is it possible to implement flat folder view option? Many times I would like to view combined files view in selected folders (2-5). Though I can use the find files options to view files in all the subfolders, I would like to view files only in selected folders.

I been planning something like that. But it is not an easy fix since a lot of commands in the Explorer Panel require that the current path of the item is the parent path of the item.. Showing multiple levels of items in a normal explorer panel results in all kind of strange issue.. But I got it on my list but it require lots of works to make it work.

I wonder if it would be easier to utilize a non-explorer ListView, that can contain pretty much anything, and then just limit what can be performed on such a list to a handful of custom-file operations, or even 'any file operation' but pass the full path of each file selected to said operation via a modified helper function/method, that would communicate to the normal internal functions that require the Explorer listview.

I've used AHK and other tools to create "file-lists" displayed in an on-the-fly ListView and the items are just treated as text-strings. Actions performed on said items, need to "FINDFILE/or interpret the string" before doing things like getting file properties (file-size, date, copy, etc).

Thus when using "Flat-View", hide the Explorer ListView, and display the non-explorer listview.

About the only thing I miss from the 'other' file manager, but I've commented on that once or twice before with a few conceptual ideas regarding it. Which is pretty much akin to having a Virtual-File-List/Virtual Panel.

11

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Donate PayPal button

« on: September 18, 2014, 22:48:00 »

I was going to perform thread-necromancy, on this Topic: Donate PayPal button somewhere (Read 818 times) ... but it appears it was locked, or auto-locked due to it being too old?

So I'll start another I guess.

Matthias, please put a PayPal DONATE button on your site,

Thanks.

I promise that I wont barrage you with feature requests. Nor feel entitled to any requests I might make as I'm pretty used to not getting any feature requests implemented after dealing with Total Commander for 10 years.

12

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: Multi Rename

« on: September 18, 2014, 22:26:32 »

If you prefer "ESC" and aren't adverse to some scripting, here's an AHK script that will do so. Also Ctrl+ESC as an option to close all Multi-Rename windows.

Code: [Select]

#SingleInstance, Force
#Warn
#NoEnv
SetTitleMatchMode, Regex

#ifWinActive ^Multi-Rename$ ahk_class ^ATL:00007FF812A545D0$
ESC::WinClose, % "ahk_id " . WinActive("A")
#ifWinActive

#if WinActive("^Multi-Rename$ ahk_class ^ATL:00007FF812A545D0$") || WinActive("^Multi Commander ahk_class ^Afx:00007FF715CB0000:0$")

^ESC:: ; Ctrl+ESC :: Close all instances of Multi-Rename
; If Multi-Rename, or Multi-Commander is the active Window.
while( gwID:=WinExist("^Multi-Rename$ ahk_class ^ATL:00007FF812A545D0$") )
WinClose, % "ahk_id " . gwID
return
#if
Please note, AHK has undergone some tumultuous times. I would recommend AHKScript.org for the most recent downloads, instead of the deprecated autohotkey.com which only offers an ahk version from 2007.

13

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: Multi-Tag returning path with escaped spaces

« on: September 18, 2014, 22:01:24 »

Awesome that that works. Not so awesome that Linux tools/utilities/shells are so stupid about quotes and escapes. They could of easily disallowed \ and " in filenames and it would of simplified usage of the command-line tools and other utilities.

14

Support and Feedback / Re: Quick Search

« on: June 08, 2014, 20:52:07 »

There are a handful of things that I think TC has gotten 100% correct, as far as implementation and configuration is concerned.

GUI QuickFilter is probably vague, and even in that case TC isn't optimum as it's own implementation refuses to permit Regex - even though it has a regex library and you can use it almost everywhere else. Anyways,  Idigress somewhat...

GUI QuickFilter (with Regex), a simple ":" as the leading character within MC's [*.*] Filter in the panel status bar, to indicate using Regex instead of "glob" or Windows CMD like ? (single char) * (any char).

As is the Filter implementation already has a number of fancier-than-most filtering type capabilities. What would perfect it (nearly) would be the "funnel" icon when clicked, toggles between:
1) Hide All Files that don't match 'this string' (where the string *could* be a regex). OR
2) Jump to the file that matches 'this string' --- instead of hiding files.
3) A single Toggle checkbox to the left of the [*.*] filter, that enables the filter to be
---> a) Normal: Only show files that match.
---> b) Exclusion: Only show files that DO NOT match (the [*.*] filter).
The "toggle state" of the Funnel Icon would be static.

The ability to filter OUT and filter IN is something that few tools enable --- yet its a very powerful concept, similiar (to me, in power at least) in how
1) EmEditor allows one to do multiple regex's in batch (one after the other), along with an interface to save those regex batches for future use.
2) Most old usenet readers scoring capabilities.
3) Opera M2 mail's filtering
4) Any tool that allows multiple 'FIND' criteria, where the match can be indicated as:
---->  EqualTo, >=,<=, <, >, NotEqualTo.

[OT]:
I frequently find myself annoyed at online shopping for instance, as almost no Store (none that I have seen at least) allow one to filter OUT, only the ability to filter IN (exclude things that don't have X-trait).

15

Support and Feedback / Re: Quick Search

« on: June 08, 2014, 06:43:24 »

The only thing I miss from that "other file-manager" is SubDir BranchView, the ability to create custom Menu (drop-downs) and adding ToolBar menus (drop-downs) to icons on the toolbar (e.g Toolbars within ToolBars). And MC technically has SubDir BranchView, it just doesn't work quite as effectively.

I've tried almost every single File-Manager you can name, except for DOpus. And MC is damned impressive,  both in its customization options (which rivals Speed Commander) and featureset which *almost* rivals - that "other file-manager" --- which MC does without plugins. MC is much like Opera 7-12 in that respect.

If Matthias does implement a GUI accessible QuickFilter, I'd hope it would be regex (or have the option) without needing a damned HACK to do so -- see that "other file manager".

If Matthias actually added those few things, and the GUI QuickFilter, I'd be first in line to donate at least $100. Then I could ditch that "other file manager" completely. Of course time-wise we'd be looking at at least 100 man hours to do so, and unreasonable to expect Matthias would focus on things that aren't relevant/important to him when it would be such a significant time investment.

16

Beta Releases / Re: Multi Commander v3.9.9 BETA

« on: December 28, 2013, 13:36:20 »

Wow. With that many customization enhancements, perhaps it should be Multi-Commander 5.0 ;-)

17

Support and Feedback / Re: File Search Tab: Rename, Multi-Rename

« on: October 19, 2013, 19:43:00 »

This was one of the best documents I had read (10+ years ago), when I knew nearly nothing on regex  beyond the bare basics. It covers most of the options apart from more advanced syntax. HTML, .txt extension added to permit attachment. It used to be distributed with XNews.

AUTHOR
       Philip Hazel, EMAIL <IN DOCUMENT, likely not active>
       University Computing Service,
       New Museums Site,
       Cambridge CB2 3QG, England.
       Phone: <IN DOCUMENT, likely not active>

       Copyright (c) 1998 University of Cambridge.
 

You could probably pull some decent examples out of it, without much issue, or redistribute it and keep the author acknowledgement.

For anyone wanting a more thorough overview: regular-expression.info was very good. There's lots of books as well, but I've found most of what I needed I could figure out myself, or refer to the document below, or articles online.

18

Support and Feedback / Re: File Search Tab: Rename, Multi-Rename

« on: October 19, 2013, 02:06:24 »

Although it seems my original supposition above may be incorrect, I can't seem to match the "dot" of a file extension from a regular tab now either. It appears that MC's implementation doesn't have an option that allows for matching the whole filename as a single string - which you would think [Replace Name & Extension] would be.

I honestly don't know what you would use [Replace Name & Extension] for in its current form

given the following file:
everything.exe
Find: e
Replace: b
--> bvbrything.bxb

I would of expected [Replace Name & Extension] to allow access to the whole filename as a single string
thus permitting you to do something like:
everything.exe
Find: thing\.exe$
Replace: one.exe.bak
---> everyone.exe.bak

Now since you have to choose the matching type, of either [Name], [Extension] or [Name & Extension]
and since that choice affects all the Find/Replace fields, it's actually impossible to change filenames AND the extension.
Unless you want to match the same string in both the filename and it's extension... which seems unlikely.

19

Support and Feedback / Re: File Search Tab: Rename, Multi-Rename

« on: October 19, 2013, 02:02:42 »

Hmm.
Although I don't use regexp a lot there does seem to be some errors here.

An example of regexp is:
\[.\] matches any single character surrounded by "[" and "]" since the brackets are escaped, for example: "[a]" and "".

Using \ however inside the Multi-Rename tool gives an error message whenever it is used.

I haven't had any problems using backslash \ in the multi-rename...

e.g. Given the list of files
opera.exe
opera.dll
opera - Copy[1].exe

• Regex, [Replace Name]

Find: ^(opera - Copy)(\[(\d)\])$
Replace: $3_$1$2

Result: 1_opera - Copy[1].exe

20

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: NEXT Version v4.x (?)

« on: October 19, 2013, 01:33:34 »

Thanks Mathias, I'll take a look at those.

21

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Re: NEXT Version v4.x (?)

« on: October 17, 2013, 23:00:52 »

Ability to customize what appears in the main Toolbar (on top) --- the button-bar on the bottom can be undocked, closed, redocked. Whereas the Toolbar is pretty static.

Consider,
1) allowing to set a min-max width on the "command line" or even the option to place it on the bottom -- which would also entail separating the Address-Bar icons from the Address-bar command line.
2) Ability to reorganize the other bars (drag, move), remove/add commands, and/or change icons.
3) Align the functionality of the ButtonBar with the toolbar: Allow editing default commands.

If the functionality of the ToolBar cannot be improved to match the flexibility of the ButtonBar - then consider:
1) Allowing the USER-Defined-Functions (ICON/Buttons) to be on their own line
OR if the "command-line" width can be limited, then at least the UDF's would have more space.

The few changes to the ButtonBar, that might improve it as noted by others: allow icons,
* possibly allow individual buttons to be "split": customizable layout.
* multiple button-bars, left-right, or more than 1 that can be undocked.

"split": e.g.
[ Sample Button #1] [ Sample Button #2] [ Sample Button #3]
[ Split#4] [ Split #5] [ Sample Button #6] [ Sample Button #7]


Buggy Large Icons in the ToolBar, when using "tabbed view" when you choose larger icons, it affects the AddressBar and UDF's but the bar doesn't gain any height to allow proper display of the icons. And none of the other tabbed icons get resized, they are still 16x16.

Also changing the ICON Size of the ToolBar could possibly be separated from choosing the icon-size of UDF's - especially if UDF's were allowed on their own line.

22

Support and Feedback / Re: Some feedback and notices

« on: October 17, 2013, 22:23:44 »

@ Mattias
Regarding Tips, Help, Color Schemes, etc.

You might want to request input from long-time users/respected forum members.

If tips was stored in an .ini file format, or xml/html, then help could be provided in bringing it up to date.

It might be better to split out the tips into individual files (if multiple people were involved), which could then be merged for distribution with the MC downloads.

Adequate documentation is usually where open-source projects fail too.

23

Support and Feedback / Re: File Search Tab: Rename, Multi-Rename

« on: October 17, 2013, 21:44:07 »

regexp work in the Multi-Rename tool.

However the Name part and Extension part are handled separately. So there is do "." part to match the extension for.

Regex is checked, and it works fine for matching the dot/extension when using [Replace Name & Extension] and a normal tab...
but when doing so from a "File Search" tab you can no longer match the dot of an extension with either regex or not.

24

Support and Feedback / Re: Locked Tab

« on: October 16, 2013, 23:55:08 »

Depends on what the use-case of a locked tab is:
In a web-browser, generally a locked tab is just prevented from closing.

In a file-manager there are a number of different use-cases:

Locked, Directory changes allowed:
1) Do or Do NOT Return to locked folder when a locked tab is activated.
2) Have a command to GoTo Root, where Root is the initial locked path.
+ Allow directory changes within a locked tab, utilizing option 1 or 2.
+ Disallow directory changes within a locked tab, opening a new tab when descending into the file structure.

Opening a new tab, when you attempt to browse above the lock-level to some, seems counter intuitive --- another tab you just have to close.
It is in effect duplicating the tab, at a level above the lock, and only saves a single click compared to just duplicating the tab and going up a level afterwards.

Multi-commander supports some of the options above.

25

Support and Feedback / Re: Flat View

« on: October 16, 2013, 23:45:10 »

While it will display all the files, once searched... the File Search tab's context menu is crippled.