Re: Friendlier dired experience [CODE INCLUDED]

[Arthur Miller]

diredc-bookmark.png
Description: PNG image

Boruch Baum <boruch_baum@gmx.com> writes:

> On 2020-11-05 09:05, Arthur Miller wrote:
>> I hope that Boruch does not take it as personal critique
>
> Not at all. It was a good read; here's some feedback.
>
>> I don't use Sunrise
>
> My memory from looking at it years ago was that it was non-functioning
> abandon-ware.
No idea if it is abandon-ware; I don't use it; I used some year ago and it
was quite competent.

Looking at github, it seems like last commit was ~6 month ago:

https://github.com/sunrise-commander/sunrise-commander

>> Unfortunately for some features, as I read the diredc code; I would
>> probably be annoyed if they were in dired. Particularly if dired asked
>> yes/no if I really wish to bookmark a place and if I wish to start
>> diredc. If user bothered to press a 4-letter combination, then I think
>> we can be sure the user wish to create that bookmark; it is really
>> unnecessary to ask if I am really sure :-). Just my opinion.
>
> You read that snippet of code incorrectly. No such prompt.
Ok, sure I was just skimming and saw those yes/no questions. I have
downloaded and tested it now and her are few questions:

How do you do bookmarks? I just bookmarked
a folder with your shortcut C-c b a; and the bookmark does not show in
bookmarks list. furthermore, when I use C-c b j; it seems to show some byte
code, you can see it in the attached screenshot.
Another quick impression: opening new frame in the bacgkround is not
really the best feel. It didn't got neither raised nor focused.

Also my original frame got resized and centered on the screen, and
diredc took place of the original frame (but in background and not focused).

The dual pane wasn't so resilient; at least not to Gnus (nothing is
:-)). After switching to Gnus and back I was left with a single window.
I am not sure if I understand the docs correctly: is it supposed to
restore window layout and buffers automatically or do I need to take an
action? It didn't happened automatically so I tried diredc-restore. I
was than ask a question to choose between starting a new or choosing two
panes or something else. I choose two-pane, but I wasn't left with same
buffers after it executed.

After I switched to the mail to continue writing it again switched to
just one window. When I switched back it was still just one window. I
then tried running again diredc (C-x 5 d); it just moved my cursor back
to old frame. Running again diredc moved cursor back to second frame but
it never switched back to dual pane nor to original buffers I had in
diredc. I am sure I am using it wrong, but I don't see in the
accompanying docs how to switch between buffers and go back to dual-pane
and original buffers.

In connection to this, looking at those predefined variables; I am not
sure I find it really useful; you can see below what diredc exported
when I run it for the first time:

export d1="~/repos/emacs-related/emacs-diredc/" d2="" 
f1="~/repos/emacs-related/emacs-diredc/README.md" f2="" 
t1="(/home/arthur/repos/emacs-related/emacs-diredc/README.md)" t2="nil"

sh-5.0$ sh-5.0$ sh-5.0$ 

Documentation says they are useful dired values - but in which way are they
useful? Do I really need to export a shortcut to a README file if I am
already using Emacs? Am I supposed to open current file from the shell
in new Eamcs instance, or what was the intended workflow?

Sorry if I am obnoxious; these are just questions I was left with after
tryimg it.

Something positive:

I like your C-c C-k and '; I'll steal it for my own hack of term-toggle,
thanks! :-). I have eshell on F2 and term on F1, but ' was really nice;
I think I'll use it instead of F2.

>> History handling: can it not be handled by recentf/winner modes already?
>
> I've been a long-time happy user of winner, and found the answer to be
> no. Winner operates on all windows of a frame, not just the current
> dired buffer. Thus, if you had in your window configuration history
> temporary quick-shell buffer-windows or quick-file-view buffer-windows,
> they would pop in and out if you were using winner-undo to navigate
> sequentially in your dired history. Also, does winner-mode have a
> quick-jump to a specific history element?
>
>> I am not particulary against custom history handling, but recentf
>> already does it and winner has undo/redo stack maybe they can be reused?
>
> When I had tried recentf years ago, I was disappointed that its only
> interface was the ncurses menu. Is that still the case? In any event,
> a recentf menu will include ALL recently visited items, so that list
> will be a mixture of emacs files and dired buffers and who knows what
> else; a user would need to visually filter out the path-names ending
> with a file from those ending with a directory ...
We have Helm + fuzzy search to filter those out ...

>> Other functionality I would like to see is some from dired-hacks: toggle
>> and filters.
>
> What do you mean by "toggles and filters"?
https://github.com/Fuco1/dired-hacks#dired-subtree
https://github.com/Fuco1/dired-hacks#dired-filter