blog: customize details pane

Post by **nikos** » 2012 Aug 12, 14:10

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
www.zabkat.com/blog/customize-details-pane.htm

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Aug 12, 16:40

nikos wrote:But as one cannot flog volunteers to perform on time we don't know when this tool will be available.

We'd like to believe in a world where our leaders are both noble of heart and bestowed of the fighting spirit to see beyond the generic rainy day. We'd like to imagine the three stooges at the Potsdam Conference rising above the usual human frailties and weaknesses that the rest of us have to deal with on a daily basis in our dirty little personal lives. We'd like to imagine ourselves sweeping aside the barbarian hordes as they threaten our deluded (yet peaceful) daydreams of a world where we're allowed to live happily ever after.

The truth is, we are born to suffer. And we live to suffer. And finally, we are but to suffer in death. It's been the way of the world since Charlemagne conquered the black clouds of his own day by subduing ignorance and imagining a renaissance of light. Historians would have us believe t'was the Fall of Constantinople which finally allowed the liberation of the entrenched ways and to bring about the nostalgic pessimism which heralded Ancient Greece as having something more to offer than a bunch of quarrelsome sheep herders' idle thoughts.

The truth is, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman couldn't have tied their own shoes if it weren't for the valiant efforts of the common foot soldier. Nor could they have nourished the hatred and evil within themselves first that gave birth to a circumstance which raised them above their meagre roots without these self-same foot soldiers. For without his henchmen in dark hoods, the Emperor is ever diminished in his nudity.

But are the common men of Empire ever remembered with speeches, statues, or plaques bearing their silent deeds? Of course not! No one would romanticise the path it takes a man to traverse the lonely Russian Steppes unless it was later divined that those days in the wilderness were really his formative years and that later on he would fall back upon the hard lessons learned from the nights of thirst, rack, ruin, and dire hopelessness. It is only in retrospect that we humans can celebrate ourselves and grin the grin of a soldier who trades his weapon for a glockenspiel and chooses the path less travelled.

But wait! When the blood doesn't flow, and the wild tribes that trouble the villages aren't subdued, and the Vikings don't turn out to have hearts of gold in the end - then! - then! - then! who is to blame? That's right - the common foot solder! For all his spit and shine he may as well have a urine stain running down his leg for all the warmth he receives.

Do the ladies flock to him?

They do not.

Do the children tremble at even the mere mention of his name any longer?

They do not.

Does the sun shine with nature's grandest vibrancy on his health? Does the wind blow with celebration through the locks of his hair on a summer's day? Do the meanest animals of the Earth make way for him when he walks the path of righteousness?

No! No! No!

His is but to bear the brunt of shame between the haughtiness and the holiness of his peers. That's his lot in life. Something goes wrong? Blame the foot soldier. Too many cars parked in front of your house that day? Blame the foot solder. Can't tie your shoes for the burgeoning girth of your middle-aged spread? That's right: blame the foot soldier.

And even with all of that, the inclination of the Emperor is still to think of nothing but flogging! Flog them in the morning. Flog them in the evening. Flog them on their way to work. Flog them when they stop for lunch. Flog them even when they have the temerity to complain that the bog-roll's run-out in the executive washroom!

It never ends.

It just never ends.

Oh, the life of the common foot soldier is a thankless one.

Thankless, I say!

Then again, it just wouldn't be a Sunday in August on the x2 forums without it, now would it?

IneedHelp · Post by **IneedHelp** » 2012 Aug 12, 18:30

What Kilmatead said.

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Aug 12, 18:57

God, and I thought I was bad when I got bored. :shock: You run out of orange juice today or something? Very odd.

Somewhat lacking in inflection - until, oddly enough, it gets to the flogging part. Your little computerised man seems to actually enjoy saying those sentences. Could that be a harbinger for things to come? That Nikos is merely acting out what his mechanised overlords will one day make real? And that they are indeed looking forward to that day? And will bad music be playing in the background when that day inevitably doth come?

I had a nightmare about a kitten once. A kitten, for frak's sake! What do you think being flogged by a weird computer voice is going to do to my equilibrium?

(That said, I suppose being reduced to a caricature is also part of Sunday afternoons in August on the x2 forums.

)

IneedHelp · Post by **IneedHelp** » 2012 Aug 12, 19:09

I've got larynx infection and I'm on medication.
Taking pills gives you an excuse for anything.

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Aug 12, 19:24

Funny, the things I got up to while taking pills in my youth got me expelled from the first university I attended. The Powers That Be didn't seem to think it gave me an excuse for anything other than delinquency. Which kind of hurt, because I was 18 at the time and all very proud of myself for being legally allowed to do anything, and being called a delinquent put me back to feeling like a 12-year-old again.

Ah, pills. (Maybe that explains the kitten nightmare?)

Post by **nikos** » 2012 Aug 13, 05:45

yesterday on the telly was a great movie about the life of john nash, another brilliant but tormented mind

GeoJono · Post by **GeoJono** » 2012 Aug 13, 15:38

Hello,

Thanks for the x2details.htm feature. I like being able to customize this pane. There is something I don't quite understand in the x2details.htm document, however.

In the div for "docs" there are lines for "Pages" and "Authors".

<div class="pane" id="docs">
<b id="e_{F29F85E0-4FF9-1068-AB91-08002B27B3D9}:14">Pages</b>: <span>val</span>
<p><b id="e_{F29F85E0-4FF9-1068-AB91-08002B27B3D9}:4">Authors</b>: <span>val</span>
</div>

The ID in the div tag limits this to just those file types that are identified as "docs", correct? What tells x2 that this or that file type is associated with the "docs" ID? The reason I ask this is that there are a lot of file types that include "Pages" and "Authors" in the details pane that are not documents, including MP3 files, Excel spreadsheets, etc.

Thanks,
Jono

fgagnon · Post by **fgagnon** » 2012 Aug 13, 16:05

I suspect (but I haven't checked it out yet) that it is all file types listed as documents in the x2 Advanced Settings Editor (on the Global tab).

default list is: [*.txt,*.doc,*.pdf,*.xls*,*.ppt*,*.rtf,*.htm*,*.xml,*.doc?]

Windoze also has a "perceived file type" parameter which may be involved too.

GeoJono · Post by **GeoJono** » 2012 Aug 13, 17:08

fgagnon wrote:I suspect (but I haven't checked it out yet) that it is all file types listed as documents in the x2 Advanced Settings Editor (on the Global tab).

default list is: [*.txt,*.doc,*.pdf,*.xls*,*.ppt*,*.rtf,*.htm*,*.xml,*.doc?]

Windoze also has a "perceived file type" parameter which may be involved too.

Thanks for the reply, fgagnon.

Well, I've checked what I have for documents in the x2 Adv Settings and I've verified that it's not that. "Pages" and "Authors" don't show up in the details for several of the file types listed for documents (txt, rtf, pdf are examples), but does for others. Also, "Pages" and "Authors" do show up for MP3 files.

Do you know how I can check the Windows "perceived file type" parameters?

Thanks again.

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Aug 13, 18:36

x2 does nothing with the <ID> tag, it has no significance, regardless of how logical it would seem to do so. You could define it as Tinkerbell if the mood so struck you. Nikos just used common filetypes to give the gist of the idea, not a declarative definition.

The idea is that x2 extracts all the columns declared in that HTML section, and if some are empty then the whole <Div> element is hidden. Conversely, if all the elements have data, then the <Div> is displayed, regardless of what the actual filetype may be. In other words, the more elements defined within a single <Div> the more likely that some of them are going to be empty - so to increase the odds of displaying, use the minimum of what you know is guaranteed data and consider the rest as free agents.

You may have noticed the <Div>'s with the filename and attributes don’t have an ID, which means they are to be shown all the time, regardless of their data. Technically, all <Div>'s could be declared that way and you would just end up with lots of things which may have no data for a filetype, but at least they would be displayed. Nikos was just being clever by using a system which suppresses empty and/or superfluous columns (which is all this data is anyway).

GeoJono · Post by **GeoJono** » 2012 Aug 13, 19:03

Hi Kilmatead - Thanks for your explanation.

I think there's part of this I'm still not understanding. You said that...

Kilmatead wrote:x2 extracts all the columns declared in that HTML section [Pages and Authors, in this case], and if some are empty then the whole <Div> element is hidden. Conversely, if all the elements have data, then the <Div> is displayed, regardless of what the actual filetype may be.

But on MP3 files, for example, the Pages item is shown in the Details pane, but it's empty.

Can you clarify this for me?

Thanks again,
Jono

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Aug 13, 19:19

I can't explain that one - Nikos defined some columns using the CLSID elements for (what he called) "compatibility purposes", whereas when defining e_ elements yourself you'd ordinarily use the COM number for the column on your system (they may be different for XP/Vista/Win7).

Perhaps {F29F85E0-4FF9-1068-AB91-08002B27B3D9} means something other than "Pages" in the real world - for this one, we need to get it from the horse's mouth.

Post by **nikos** » 2012 Aug 14, 08:17

kilmataed (stressed by the possible flogging

) described things accurately. The only thing that matters is the column identifier, all else is foobar

on my system there is no hiccup with MP3 "pages". Perhaps you've changed the HTM file already? Or you have installed some MP3 shell extension that creates this problem?

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2012 Aug 14, 09:40

I answer only to the spirit of Charlemagne - flogging will merely add to my corporeal woes, it won't substantively change my soul.

I will, however, confirm this anomaly with MP3's - and I have no shell extensions installed relating to media/music files, so I doubt it's that. I have noticed that it doesn't happen with all MP3's - just ones that have had some/all of their internal metadata modified (nothing related to "Pages", though

I'm afraid your CLSID itself is acting up).

* * *

Re-reading the blog, I am aghast (aghast, I say!) that you actually suggested people count the offsets to get Explorer columns manually. That's like so antithetical to the spirit of computers that even Charlemagne (had he a computer) would blush.

So, as a stop-gap measure, anyone may use this command-line utility to generate a list of e_<nnn> column references. Just run the DoricToIonic.exe ("columns", geddit?

) and it will create a text file in the same folder with the relevant information for your system. This will work for XP, Vista, and Win7 (x86/x64) - though I have no idea what happens when you use Win8 (and, like all right-thinking people, nor do I care).

(The source code is included for those who are nervous about such things - all it does it enumerate the COM objects directly from the shell (including x2's [S] columns) - it won't fundamentally alter the ethical state of the universe or anything entertaining like that, unfortunately).