five wishes

Coruscant · Post by **Coruscant** » 2004 Dec 02, 02:07

I just love this program. It blows away every file explorer I've used and falls short of Windows Explorer in only four specific areas. What I'd like to see is:

1) Improved sorting of accented characters. Current, xplorer2 sorts this way: Ca, Ce, Ci, Co, Cu, Cé. The sixth entry should be placed after the second and not after the fifth.

2) Auto-refresh of the Recycle Bin. When items are restored from the Recycle Bin, they appear to remain there and a manual refresh is required to clear it. Entries should disappear immediately once the restore is complete.

3) When file extensions are hidden, renaming excludes everything after the last period. The entire filename should be highlighted for renaming.

4) The ability to delete folders from inside the folder pane (left) and not only from inside the file pane (right).

Finally, a feature request...

5) A fast way to change the case (UPPER or lower) of filenames as well as their CREATED, MODIFIED and ACCESSED dates. Extending this to folders and making both recursive would be icing on the cake.

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Dec 02, 08:15

1. i guess x2 does this for speed disregarding the special needs of international users. I'll fix that in the next version; in the meantime you can use the "other" name column, the non-stock one supplied by explorer

2. not possible, the recycle bin doesn't cooperate with 3rd party programs

3. i guess this is a small bug but only manifests if you have many dots in filenames

4. if you don't use the commandline then turn on GIOPT_NOSETCURDIR as explained in registry.txt

5. you can change the case of filenames, albeit not en masse. You can change the dates using Actions | change attributes; for recursive you need the pro version that can browse folders flat

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Dec 02, 08:29

ps regarding #1: what is your default language? are you using "english" windows perhaps? Try setting your control panel language options

JRz · Post by **JRz** » 2004 Dec 02, 09:55

nikos wrote:ps regarding #1: what is your default language? are you using "english" windows perhaps? Try setting your control panel language options

What do you mean by this Nikos? Because my Dutch version also shows this anomaly (using the stock name column). Extended characters are sorted after the normal ones (I think the order is simply by ascii code).

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Dec 02, 10:18

are you on "dutch locale"? have you checked your regional settings in control panel? For alpha-sorting I'm using this API called lstrcmpi which is meant to do locale-aware sorting. Of course it is possible that I was misinformed by m$

ps please try this: next to the name column put the "Full name" stock column and sort by that; is it any different?

JRz · Post by **JRz** » 2004 Dec 02, 15:21

Yep, on Dutch locale. When sorting on the 'Fullname' column (in the dutch version simply called 'Naam' == Name in English), items are sorted like in Explorer (no surprise really).

Maybe lstrcmpi is not enough and you should use CompareString (and feed it the users locale as first parameter)??.

But, then again, I assume you sort the Fullname and Name[s] columns the same way? If that's the case, what is happening here

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Dec 02, 16:13

you got it!
i thought i was using lstrcmpi but that's only for the fullname column! the plain name is using a CString member that clearly messes things up

but since the fullname is sorted properly it means that the fix is trivial!

JRz · Post by **JRz** » 2004 Dec 02, 20:17

Nikos,

That's great!
I think this will solve an issue I believe was posted some time ago about the sort order being different from Windows Explorer in some cases when special characters were used. I've done some investigating (see below) and the different sorting algorithms have an impact on where your files end up in the pane if you use special characters (of course). Especially the use of the tilde character (~) has a big impact, because it will put your file at the bottom when sorting on Name is used now, while sorting on Full name puts it on top (where it should go) !!

Code: Select all

Sorted on Name column
==========================

Name                 Full name
!normally on top.txt !normally on top.txt
0912309123jkjaf.txt  0912309123jkjaf.txt
123dhfjsjkajklfd.txt 123dhfjsjkajklfd.txt
na!apen.txt          na!apen.txt
na#apen.txt          na#apen.txt
na%apen.txt          na%apen.txt
na&apen.txt          na&apen.txt
na(apen.txt          na(apen.txt
na)apen.txt          na)apen.txt
na+apen.txt          na+apen.txt
na,apen.txt          na,apen.txt
na-apen.txt          na-apen.txt
na.apen.txt          na.apen.txt
na1apen.txt          na1apen.txt
na=apen.txt          na=apen.txt
na@apen.txt          na@apen.txt
na[apen.txt          na[apen.txt
na]apen.txt          na]apen.txt
na^apen.txt          na^apen.txt
na_apen.txt          na_apen.txt
naaaapen.txt         naaaapen.txt
naaapen.txt          naaapen.txt
naapen.txt           naapen.txt
naapena.txt          naapena.txt
naapenz.txt          naapenz.txt
naapen~.txt          naapen~.txt
nabapen.txt          nabapen.txt
na{apen.txt          na{apen.txt
na}apen.txt          na}apen.txt
na~apen.txt          na~apen.txt

Sorted on Full name column
=====================

Name                 Full name
!normally on top.txt !normally on top.txt
0912309123jkjaf.txt  0912309123jkjaf.txt
123dhfjsjkajklfd.txt 123dhfjsjkajklfd.txt
na!apen.txt          na!apen.txt
na#apen.txt          na#apen.txt
na%apen.txt          na%apen.txt
na&apen.txt          na&apen.txt
na(apen.txt          na(apen.txt
na)apen.txt          na)apen.txt
na,apen.txt          na,apen.txt
na.apen.txt          na.apen.txt
na@apen.txt          na@apen.txt
na[apen.txt          na[apen.txt
na]apen.txt          na]apen.txt
na^apen.txt          na^apen.txt
na_apen.txt          na_apen.txt
na{apen.txt          na{apen.txt
na}apen.txt          na}apen.txt
na~apen.txt          na~apen.txt
na+apen.txt          na+apen.txt
na=apen.txt          na=apen.txt
na1apen.txt          na1apen.txt
naaaapen.txt         naaaapen.txt
naaapen.txt          naaapen.txt
naapen.txt           naapen.txt
na-apen.txt          na-apen.txt
naapen~.txt          naapen~.txt
naapena.txt          naapena.txt
naapenz.txt          naapenz.txt
nabapen.txt          nabapen.txt

For several reasons the second order is better. All special characters sorted before numerics which in turn are before alphanumeric. That a cleaner way to sort then the (current) sorting on name. That looks almost random at first glance

But, now the root of the evil is found, I'm sure it'll be fixed in the next release

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Dec 02, 20:34

the difficult question is, do i sort this out immediately?

or perhaps we just say that everyone will have to use full name column till the next release?

JRz · Post by **JRz** » 2004 Dec 02, 21:03

Is alright with me. Didn't bother too much about it until now and as you say, you can use the fullname column if it gets in the way.

Next release (no patch I mean) is quick enough as far as I'm concerned

fgagnon · Post by **fgagnon** » 2004 Dec 02, 21:47

nikos wrote:the difficult question is, do i sort this out immediately?
or perhaps we just say that everyone will have to use full name column till the next release?

It's been many months since the sortorder on Name vs FullName variants issue was discussed. (& at the time the solution was thought to be a complicated roll-your-own function).
Glad to hear the solution is 'trivial' & thanks to Jan for hitting upon the key

As it has been s while since the 'problem' has even been mentioned, I agree that incorporating the solution can wait until the next release. :thumbup:

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Dec 03, 08:41

i wonder if this explains why most of my sales come from the US/UK
it could be that e.g. German users see the sorting mess and move along to the next file manager