future: custom line spacing

[pj]

Kilmatead's Dropbox link to his resource editing hack is dead.

Oops, so it is. Yeah, that one's on hold for awhile, an ancient project written in an ancient language I barely remember. It needs a little love to rejoin the modern age. Update TBA. I'll disable the link for now.

Perchance a thought to restoring all the photos lost when Nikos moved the site to another host and "forgot" everyone's photos?

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pj

[pj]

Writing code in hieroglyphs is not that weird!

APL -The Nightmare Before Programming

Had a keyboard with stickers on the keys with all the APL symbols, and, after plugged an EEPROM into the extra socket in my IBM PC XT motherboard, could actually write and display APL programs on my green screen monochrome monitor. Fantastically powerful and totally incomprehensible. Hit the memory wall very quickly on the 640K XT with any sizable array.

Then I fell back to BASIC after discovering PDF 7.1, aka a "professionals version of Quick BASIC". And from there the rest is very blurry!

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pj in (still blurry) FL

[opusman]

There is no clean way to do this other than resizing the imagelist (vertical stretch). As a result the icons look a bit funny.

Use a dummy (empty) image list to set the line spacing, and draw the icons yourself from the real shell imagelist using NM_CUSTOMDRAW.

[nikos]

do you also suffer from this win11 progress bug?

[johngalt]

As someone who keeps Xplorer² around because I paid for it, dammit, and because it still does something my normal daily FM does not, access Android devices in FT Mode, I can say that the layout and old school toolbars are getting a bit annoying.

I run only 4K displays, and naturally, I need to use Scaling to make things look larger on the high resolution. Windows is set to use 150% scaling by default.

However, Xplorer² doesn't scale well, ***even if you force Windows to use alternate DPI settings***.

Furthermore, the text for icons with labels for both the main toolbar as well as the Drive bar are miniscule, and the font in the menu sections are rather small, compared to my actual panes....

https://photos.app.goo.gl/YTHtR4KyLeL2nGUV8

Which leads to an aside - I'm not that good at making new tool bars, but we need something larger than what we've got for toolbars. I've tried before to upscale toolbars and they come out looking ... janky.

But, to go with the icons for the toolbars, the menu fonts need to be able to adjust to a similar (if not exact) value that the panes use.

Even the Options box, though nicely redesigned, is a bit on the small side.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/sVJK3Hhruch7DGNX6

In contrast, what has become my daily driver for a FM, OneCommander, shows a lot more consistency.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Nkwkx5VPf1HrKFrG7

I've only recently gotten into upscaling images to a usable size to match the display resolution, but the toolbar manipulation is beyond me for the moment. But I cannot edit the text for the buttons regardless.

I don't mind that the X² interface is not like in OC and other 'new fangled Material theming', however, a little bit of consistency, and especially keeping menus and toolbar fonts at a reasonable size (either 100% of pane or 85% of pane font size) would make it a lot easier. I have to finagle with it every time, or lean in close to look at it to make sure I can read it right now. And I don't have time for all that.

One other reason I started using OC is that it allows you to integrate TeraCopy (I also have the paid license, and the ver 4 RC is much faster, including the use of Blake3 for FT verification). But the layout also makes much more sense on a widescreen monitor (4k @ 3840 x 2160 pixels / 16:9 ratio) - across the top, it is wasting a ton of space, in the side, it occupies a small amount but clears vertical spacing amount enough that it makes for the reduced horizontal spacing.

Add to that the native full dark mode (yes, I know, some people don't care for it, but I do prefer dark mode apps to be fully dark mode, not partial, with a lot of grays, particularly lighter grays, around boxing in content), and many of the features that I do use in X² (like an extensive, native multiple file renaming scheme, allowing for simply replacement, adding / removing, and RegEx extended filename manipulation) also being present in OC, and it's easier to understand why X² is my workhorse relegated to the sidelines because it just isn't good enough anymore.

Hell, I've even redirected KB shortcuts in OC to act more like in X², like F5, F6, F7 and F8....

Sorry, Nikos, I am not trying to showcase another product in your forums, but I am trying to showcase the benefits it has over some of the stagnation in X²'s visual appeal. X² is still king in file manipulations above and beyond file transfers, but it is losing ground in other aspects.

---

Side note, the dev of OC has also pinpointed that progress bar loss after the initial showing, and he has traced it to particular Windows Updates in WIndows 11:

I think I found the culprit for missing copy/move progress dialogs
KB5060842
Upgraded one Windows 10 PC to Windows 11; OC dialogs work, Windows says there is an update KB5060842 available; I install it and after restart dialogs are broken. Went into
Settings > Windows Update > Update history > Uninstall updates
and uninstalled that update and the dialogs show up again.
Anyone else had that update installed recently?

Also caused by KB5063060. Uninstalling that one fixes the issue

[nikos]

people who have problems with fonts etc are those with settings from ancient versions. If you install xplorer2 fresh it should be fine out of the box. Also using forced compatibility tweaks usually makes things even more unfathomable! Try this font reset script while xplorer2 isn't running:
www.zabkat.com/blog/high-dpi-screen-toolbars.htm

also you can make the main font even larger to taste from options

xplorer2 is a tool, not a fashion icon. You can use your other "file manager" (browser really) for your daily stylish work, then if you need to do something serious you can fall back to trusty xplorer2

[Kilmatead]

It's funny how people seem to post these kind of things at least once a year. It must be a perennial complaint, like when the humidity gets in the knees, and the grass seems to grow faster than in yesteryear.

In any event, whilst it's beyond my most meagre grievings to address all your issues, two (at least) stand out as simpler than they seem. As far as the font-size for toolbar text goes, adjust to taste:

Tools -> Advanced Options -> Layout Settings tab -> Toolbar font-size factor to normal

And in this same thread above we've already covered TeraCopy integration - which is... simple and flawless? Of all the things to trip over, that isn't one of them.

xplorer2 is a tool, not a fashion icon

Yeah, you tell 'em, boss-man. The pithier the better. Take that you .NET interfacey fanboys! Yo mamma buy you them skinny-ass jeans? That's right. Uh huh. Bring it.

(I've been watching reruns of NYPD Blue - all the wrong bits of cultural narcissism tend to rub off on me. Could have been worse... if I was watching Deadwood reruns I'd say something like "$5 to stick it in the front, $7 for the back". Make of that what you will. Plugins, indeed! )

[IneedHelp]

However, Xplorer² doesn't scale well, ***even if you force Windows to use alternate DPI settings***.

About two years ago I developed a proof-of-concept application in .NET for a company's AI proompters; here's a video where I would highlight UI theme transitioning and also UI scaling:
https://vimeo.com/1093218839?share=copy#t=20

Whether such features would appeal to existing x2 users is uncertain. What I do know is that despite a decade of hard selling x2 to people who could benefit from it, none of them ended up adopting it long-term.

[Kilmatead]

Whether such features would appeal to existing x2 users is uncertain.

Yeah, there's definitely a before-and-after science vibe to the culture around here. From a business standpoint, I suppose it's something to decry, but all the businessmen I ever knew never seemed able to fully appreciate the reason blood pools on the floor, and for that, their innocence condemns their achievements.

What I do know is that despite a decade of hard selling x2 to people who could benefit from it, none of them ended up adopting it long-term.

À propos de rien, I have a big lump on the side of my head where I keep bashing it off the wall trying to get Nikos to appreciate Edward Gibbon and Montaigne, too. You can lead a horse to water...

[Gandolf]

...I have a big lump on the side of my head where I keep bashing it off the wall...

The best thing about bashing your head against a brick wall is that it feels so good when you stop!

I've stopped bashing my head against Nikos's brick wall - IT'S GREAT.

[IneedHelp]

Seems we’re all doomed to test the structural integrity of walls with our skulls

[Kilmatead]

If it's good enough for rats it's good enough for me. Nature does lead us to pursuits less noble than absurd, and the perseverance doesn't always reward - yet, as they say, it's really just the journey.

[IneedHelp]

If it's good enough for rats it's good enough for me

How fitting, I'm currently playing a game where the meta strategy is literally bashing one's skull against enemy walls until something gives. The rats, it seems, were onto something all along.

[johngalt]

people who have problems with fonts etc are those with settings from ancient versions. If you install xplorer2 fresh it should be fine out of the box. Also using forced compatibility tweaks usually makes things even more unfathomable! Try this font reset script while xplorer2 isn't running:
www.zabkat.com/blog/high-dpi-screen-toolbars.htm

also you can make the main font even larger to taste from options

xplorer2 is a tool, not a fashion icon. You can use your other "file manager" (browser really) for your daily stylish work, then if you need to do something serious you can fall back to trusty xplorer2

I cleanly install windows once a year. Last time I did it was at the end of April. a cleanly installed X without my settings restored is completely unusable because it does not scale well.

I've copied the file and immediately on starting X² small icons was now disabled. The font reset made everything tiny.

If the app followed Windows scaling this would not be an issue at all.

Now I have to uninstall, clear the registry, fix the file I had in place for large icons, and see why this is all happening.

If you want to call another FM a browser, sure, that is your right. But I call not working with desktop settings that the user needs to use antiquated.

[johngalt]

The linked blog is still linked to a broken skin48 file, that's why.