exporting catalog categories + category items (with color)

[jlahijani]

I've been using XYplorer happily for over four years and it's one of my favorite programs.

As a web developer, I work on many different sites at once and I use XYplorer's Catalog feature extensively. In a sense, it's become my project status manager. I have about five different categories inside of my catalog, including "Revolving", "Present", "Potential", "Post" and "Pass". Under each category, I have project folders (named by the site's domain like "example.com") based on their current status, which when middle-clicked, opens a new tab showing the contents of the folder. Sometimes I'll add colors to these catalog folder items to make them stand out more depending on certain circumstances.

It's all nice and slick and I find this project status information to be very valuable. However, when I'm on the go with my mobile phone, I don't have access to this information unless I create a separate list that repeats this information (usually handwritten notes on small pieces of paper), which I would like to avoid. Currently, XYplorer's catalog information gets stored in catalog.dat, however it's not entirely plain text so I can't hack something out of that.

Therefore, I think a great scripting feature would be to create a function or set of functions allowing to loop through catalog categories and their items, preferably with the ability to grab color data (foreground and background). It could then be exported to an HTML file which I could access remotely.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Is there a way to do what I described currently that I may be overlooking?

Thanks.

[RalphM]

Wouldn't it be easier to create a screenshot and put the jpg somewhere accessible?

[xman]

You could also use Extract option in Raw View mode to extract all strings from Catalog.dat and put them to a text file or somewhere.

[admin]

Any thoughts or suggestions? Is there a way to do what I described currently that I may be overlooking?

Interesting wish. Indeed this is not possible at the moment. But it's not that easy to do, and I wonder how many users would actually need this. And once I write an export function, I should also write an import function... this does not really fit into my current schedule... maybe later...

[jlahijani]

Any thoughts or suggestions? Is there a way to do what I described currently that I may be overlooking?

Interesting wish. Indeed this is not possible at the moment. But it's not that easy to do, and I wonder how many users would actually need this. And once I write an export function, I should also write an import function... this does not really fit into my current schedule... maybe later...

How about this, which is a more general feature...

Currently, when right-clicking on a catalog category, it brings up a menu where the "Copy all items in category" option (and other options) exists. There should be "To Clipboard" option menu with sub-options in this area, similar to file lists. Not just the ability to copy the paths of the selected category's items, but the items in ALL categories of the current catalog as well.

I believe the rationale behind the catalog, according to XYplorer's developers, is a user defined, 2-level tree (the category behind the parent / 1st level, and the items [files and folders] underneath each category behind the children / 2nd level) of commonly accessed files and folders. It's really a custom file/folder shortcut list. And just like normal file lists, the option to copy the items to the clipboard exists. So why not extend clipboard options to the catalog?

Also, it would be nice if one of the options under "To Clipboard", if this feature were to be made, should include the ability to copy not just the Item Caption and Item Location, but also the Text and Background colors. This is kind of similar to the "To Clipboard > Select List Row(s)", but since catalogs don't have columns, this data would be nice to have in its place.

Thoughts?

[admin]

Thoughts?

Please give an example of a bunch of data how you would like to have them exported.

[jlahijani]

Thoughts?

Please give an example of a bunch of data how you would like to have them exported.

This screenshot demonstrates a potential "To Clipboard" menu when right-clicking on a catalog category, which I came up with based off of the current "To Clipboard" menu when right-clicking on one or more files.

The resulting data that is copied to the clipboard is shown in green. Self-explanatory as to what the data will look for the other options.

[admin]

Thank you, very clear.

However, I think this would be an overkill for 99,9% of all users. I will think about a scirpting solution...

[admin]

I will think about a scirpting solution...

Done.

In the next version you can select a catalog category (or any item within a category) and run e.g. this script:

Code: Select all

::text catalogreport("Category: {Caption}", "- {Caption}, {Location}, {RGB Text}, {RGB Back}", 1);

It will create a simple report on that Category. Omit the final "1" to have a report on the whole catalog.

[jlahijani]

Awesome!