blog: poor man's duplicate detection

Post by **nikos** » 2013 Mar 31, 09:12

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
http://zabkat.com/blog/find-duplicates-quickly.htm

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2013 Mar 31, 11:30

You were being sneaky with that "catholically" remark, weren't you? I was all set to rant and rave about how you Orthodox induced folk were ignoring the half-billion post-Reformation lunatics who aren't skittish about Popish infections - but as you didn't capitialise the 'C' in catholically you were using the "Of broad or liberal scope" definition, in the same way as I always use the term Ecumenical in a non-religious context. Sneaky bugger, you are.

That said, section 7 of the Easter Wikipedia page relating to "Non-observing Christian groups" makes for entertaining reading, if you're into that kind of thing. Curious how the Puerto Rican Feliz Navidad made it big in the public consciousness because of a silly song, but none of these have caught on for Easter yet. As usual, Geseënde Paasfees from the Afrikaans wins a prize for best spelling, even if it sounds like they're just saying "please pass the Parsnips".

Anyway, dumb question (which I really should know the answer to), but is there any means of getting rid of those enforced grey auto-striping lines which wreak display havoc - especially when not sorting by Names - never mind the mind-numbing conflicts with Colour-Coding which can occur? They make my eyes hurt and confuse my brainwaves.

The dumb thing is, they even show up when you're not even comparing items by duplicated nomenclature!

Tuxman · Post by **Tuxman** » 2013 Mar 31, 15:04

Happy easter, if catholically applicable!

I - as a practicing sympathizer of the Church of Satan - feel offended by the omnipresent Christianity.

Post by **nikos** » 2013 Apr 02, 13:19

Kilmatead wrote:is there any means of getting rid of those enforced grey auto-striping lines which wreak display havoc - especially when not sorting by Names

these stripes are a poor man's group indicator, separating the various duplicate files for those poor sods that have old windows and there's no group mode. What other way is there?

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2013 Apr 02, 14:13

nikos wrote:What other way is there?

You really should watch Into the Wild you know - it'll teach you to look at the big picture instead of the poor-man's malady and thereby diminish any sense of importance from the 1001 menial things we concern ourselves with while history rages around us.

Your mistake is in the assumption that "a way" needs to be found to separate the duplicates in the first place - all I want to do is turn the "helpful" lines off, as they confuse my already somewhat addled brain and completely screw-up Colour-Coding... and (in particular if that "auto-select" option is enabled) under Aero everything looks rather like some form of evil goulash which just completely clashes with the décor. Most often I deal with duplicates by location, not by name, so after sorting by pathname only to have everything resemble a corduroy jacket which was poorly cleaned after someone spilled the goulash on it does not fill my heart with joy.

I think more options should fill people's hearts with joy - isn't that what file-management is all about anyway? (Wait, don't answer that.)

Grouping is for social animals - we are geeks, and by definition geeks are unsociable. Oh sure, they try - and many pretend to have social graces and convince themselves that the realm of the family/friends is somehow real - but they all intrinsically know the ghostly lure of the kingdom of the mind and will inevitably find rest in their own eremitical mien. May take some 70 or 80 years, but they all get there in the end.

Thus (based on that somewhat tenuous postulate), grouping is ultimately unnecessary and completely unhelpful! Especially when done to keep the grey-line-painting industry of backwards-compatibility in business. :roll:

FrizzleFry · Post by **FrizzleFry** » 2013 Apr 03, 02:13

for me the banding color is a light yellow, which is what I have set the inactive pane background to... have you tried messing with that to see if you can 'get rid of the banding'

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2013 Apr 03, 07:13

Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of being able to distinguish between active and inactive panes? After 4 or five years of using the same colour, I doubt this dog is going to acclimatise to that sort of change.

(Good idea though - hadn't realised there actually was a connection - though we won't mention the growing question in our mind about exactly how you arrived at yellow as an in-active colour! As everyone knows from driving school, yellow means "go a little faster".)

Edit: And after a bit of experimentation setting it to "white" will indeed "get rid of" the bands. Unfortunately the unintended side-effect of "losing" easy pane-status is seriously disproportionate to the gain.

FrizzleFry · Post by **FrizzleFry** » 2013 Apr 03, 21:15

I agree... there should be a separate color setting for the banding so those that do not want it can "disable" it... or maybe even a more sensible disable banding option... don't hold your breath

There is also the highlight active pane titlebar option... I have not been using that but looking at it now it's not bad...

Is the inactive pane background color a global or layout setting?

I'm not sure why I decided to use yellow for the inactive pane... I did not like the default light gray and the pale yellow I'm using does not affect my colors much...

Kilmatead · Post by **Kilmatead** » 2013 Apr 03, 22:00

FrizzleFry wrote:There is also the highlight active pane titlebar option...

I tried that one before, but ironically the "active" colour is a weird greyish thing, which is the colour I've been using for 5 years as the "inactive" colour! Go figure - the one time in my whole life I manage to kill two birds with the same stone and it turns out one of the birds was my spirit-guide! I weep for simpler times when men of my age were usually 10-years dead by now. I wonder, can normal hunter-gatherer-types qualify for one of those cool (but fiery) Viking funerals? Lord knows I need something to aspire to. Irony is indeed a quiet companion of obscurity.

FrizzleFry wrote:Is the inactive pane background color a global or layout setting?

It does appear to be layout specific - which I suppose gives some leeway to play with (as you're right - no holding of breath when there's an excuse to make yet another layout). That said, it's progress.

...and speaking of progress, wouldn't it be peachy-cool if the progress of lengthy content-comparisons was represented in the taskbar like robust copy/move indicators are? Give me something to watch while I instance-out to count how many rabbit-skins it takes to buy me a funeral-pyre on a boat...

If only we had a developer who thought scrap-containers deserved such useful frippery... and indeed, wouldn't it provide a humorous two-fingered salute to the "backwards compatibility" which inspired this little foray in the first place... now that would be deliciously ironic, so it would...