Re: dired-details: show/hide file details in Dired

[Rob Giardina]

On Jul 4, 2007, at 9:30 PM, Richard Stallman wrote:

> >     2. Provide a user option, `dired-details-propagate-flag'
> >        which, if non-nil, propagates the last hide/show state
> >        you chose to the next Dired buffer you open.
> >
> > I would rather not install that.
>
>     In that case, then that should be the only behavior,
>
> I don't agree.

I've thought about Drew's propagate behavior and I like it. If you  
sometimes like seeing 'ls -l' details and sometimes like a terse  
display, having your mood perpetuate when you browse through 5 or 10  
directories in a row is a good thing. That said, my mood doesn't  
usually change, I just set the default to terse mode and peek at the  
details when I need to know.

When reviewing the code, I discovered that the `dired-details-toggle'  
function (submitted by Klaus Berndl) has a clever feature I never  
used. The 2nd param is a flag to update the `dired-details-initially- 
hide' variable to the new state set by the toggle call thus the next  
buffer will open in that state. This supports the usage by the multi- 
mood user (with an appropriate key-binding) without adding another  
variable to track global state.

-rob