Re: dired-view-command-alist

[Reinhard Kotucha]

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

    > It sounds like a good idea to merge this code into Dired.  Would
    > you like to prepare a patch and show it to me?  It needs to
    > include etc/NEWS and the manual.

I tried it and it looks good.  I'd like to suggest a small change,
though.

When more then one file is marked, it displays something like

! on * [3 files]: {3 guesses} [ghostview]

in the minibuffer.  The string "[3 files]" can be omitted because at
the same time the names of the marked files are displayed in a
separate window.  Thus "! on *:" is sufficient.  

It's very important to know whether you marked several files or none.
Suppose you marked some files.  In a large directory the marked files
might be outside the visible part of the buffer.  If you now type "!"
and you do not remember that some files are marked, you expect that
you run the command on the file under the cursor.  So it's useful to
be warned that "!" will act on more than one file but the number of
files is absolutely irrelevant.

It is not necessary to display the number of guesses because if the
first guess is not what you want, you'll intuitively look for a better
guess in the history.

Some commands have a lot of options and it would be nice if
unnecessary stuff can be omitted from the minibuffer.

Furthermore, I think that "[ghostcript]" should be displayed only
after you pressed "!" and should disappear as soon as you press the
<up> key.

For instance, I get this:

keystroke: !
minibuffer: ! on * [3 files]: {3 guesses} [ghostview]
keystroke: <up>
minibuffer: ! on * [3 files]: {3 guesses} [ghostview] ghostview
keystroke: <up>
minibuffer: ! on * [3 files]: {3 guesses} [ghostview] xloadimage
keystroke: <up>
minibuffer: ! on * [3 files]: {3 guesses} [ghostview] lpr
keystroke: <down>
minibuffer: ! on * [3 files]: {3 guesses} [ghostview] xloadimage
keystroke: <down>
minibuffer: ! on * [3 files]: {3 guesses} [ghostview] ghostview
keystroke: <down>
minibuffer: ! on * [3 files]: {3 guesses} [ghostview]

The string "[ghostview]" is quite misleading except where it occurs
the first time (where you just has to press the RET key if you want).

I prefer that:

keystroke: !                        ;; line 1
minibuffer: ! on *: [ghostview]:    ;; line 2
keystroke: <up>                     ;; line 3
minibuffer: ! on *: ghostview       ;; line 4
keystroke: <up>                     ;; line 5
minibuffer: ! on *: xloadimage      ;; line 6
keystroke: <up>                     ;; line 7
minibuffer: ! on *: lpr             ;; line 8
keystroke: <down>                   ;; line 9
minibuffer: ! on *: xloadimage      ;; line 10
keystroke: <down>                   ;; line 11
minibuffer: ! on *: ghostview       ;; line 12
keystroke: <down>                   ;; line 13
minibuffer: ! on *:                 ;; line 14

In line 2 and 14 the last colon means that you can enter a command.
And "[ghostview]" in line 2 means that you can press <RET> instead.

If you move into the history (lines 3...12) you can still execute any
command but you have to remove the command provided by the history
before.  So I think that it's useful to provide an empty line if you
come back from the history (line 14).  

Well, if you need something different from the defaults, progname
completion would be quite useful.  Since shell-mode already has this
feature I suppose that it's not too difficult to make use of it in
dired-do-shell-command.

Regards,
  Reinhard

-- 
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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-4592165
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover                              mailto:address@hidden
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