Re: [gcmd-usr] Some quircks/missing features

[Micha]

"mntn lists" <address@hidden>:

| At the moment I am in the process of switching from Total Commander (TC) to
| Gnome-commander (GC). 


| Of course while using it I stumble on quirks and
| things I miss. I hope this is the right place to post them, if not, please
| tell me where to post this stuff.

This is the right place. You have some experience, which can be valuable
to the developers. Feel free to make suggestions.
You just should not expoect anything to happen fast.
At the moment, this process has a high 'nice' value ;)
with only 2 active developers and based on rare spare time....
active means enjoy the summer too, i guess they use to scribble the 
latest experimental patches on beer mats ;) but hey, it's a great time isn't it.


| 1. There is a little quick regarding selecting files.
| - When I want to select a list of files except one file in the list I
| SHIFT-LMB a list of files. Then I CTRL-LMB a file in the selected list to
| deselect it. But the problem is that there is no visual feedback if the file
| is deselected because the 'Cursor' color is given to the 'active' file. If
| you press CTRL-LMB again (for example because you deselected the wrong file
| in the list) the background and font color stay the same. In TC this is
| solved by letting the active file (under the cursor) have a border (no
| background color) and let the background color be the color of
| selected/deselected file. I hope you understand what I mean.

This is indeed a problem, and should be filed a bug.

| 2. A function I use a lot in TC is searching for files and text in files.
| - In search dialog when you search for text in files via 'Find text', you
| also have to set 'Search for' to '*'. I think it is very reasonable that
| when I search for some text and leave 'Search for' box empty that I want to
| search in all files.

'mc' solves it by pre-setting the * in respective fields.

| - Very nice of GC is that in the result box after a search I can view a file
| (F3) and edit a file (F4)

It is planned to extend the usage of this kind of 'second filelist' window
for more general purposes, eg. storing the matching result of a search
in a kind of 'bookmark'.


, second option is not available in TC. Very handy
| in TC is that when I search for text in a file and view the file(s) of the
| search, in the viewer I only need to press F3 to highlight the text I was
| searching for:
|     1. Search for text in files
|     2. In result LMB to select file to view
|     3. Press F3 to view file
|     4. Press F3 again to find first occurrence of text I was searching for
| in files
|     5. Press F3 again to find second occurence
|     6. Etc...

These are all reasonable suggestions, but again, they are rather 'nice'....

When reaching the end of file, there could be a prompt
'Continue from the beginning of file, or weith next file of list'.

Meanwhile you have to come around with the Ctrl-F search of the F3 viewer.
It is planned to implement multi-file browsing (switching with key shortcut)
into he viewer, which would improve search usability a little bit, too.
 

| - I am missing searching at date of last file-edit action.
Yepp.

You can sort the date columns, at least...

Anyway, if you're used to commandline, for all missing features you can use 
the gcmd commandline with something like
 
sh -c "find -mmin +1 -mmin -600"
which will find files modified bewteen 1 Minute and 10 hours ago.

If it will not open an xterm you may try
xmessage "`find -mmin +1 -mmin -600`"
instead, but i admit this is rather tedious, and it would make sense to 
hack a little sheellscript tool as program for rightclick on multiple files 
selection. 

You may also try the commandline 
find *txt | xargs nedit
which opens the matching files in multiple tabs of nedit.


| 3. FTP connections
| - I personally rather do not store passwords of FTP servers on my harddisk.
| In GC I could not find an option to leave password empty and let GC prompt
| for a password when I make the connection. In TC you can even leave 'User'
| empty and the program prompts for it when making a connection.

True, and should be filead as bug again.

| - Another handy feature of TC is to set an initial directory to change to
| when making an FTP-connection.

| Ik hope you find my comments usefull. While using GC probably more
| questions/issues might pop up, which if appreciated I will post here.

You're welcome.




micha