Displaying changed settings in the Configuration dialog

[DmFedorov]

I would like to be able to see with my eyes in the configuration dialog the changed (compared to fresh installation) settings.

In the normal state, the changed settings, of course, do not need to be highlighted, but when the user needs to see what he has changed, I would like to press a keyboard shortcut that would temporarily highlight the changed settings (underlining, bordering with a frame, exclamation mark, or something similar).

The highlight mode should theoretically disappear when you reopen the Configuration dialog or switch to a new section of the dialog, depending on whether this interferes with XY or not.

It would also be nice in this mode of highlighting changes to be able to copy the changed keys from ini file, that correspond to the changed settings.

Perhaps this has already been suggested many times. But I haven't seen it yet.

Remark: If the highlighting itself is too complicated or unnecessary thing, then, in principle, it is enough to be able to copy these changed settings in text form (since it is customary to display it in the "List of All Settings" window after clicking button "Jump to Setting...") and after each changed setting display the key of the ini file that is responsible for this.

[eil]

+!
Though i understand this probably won't get high priority, this feature would be useful to come at least in future. Apart from simple "see what you changed" this would allow to "see what is different and maybe causing you problem/bug behaviour". It's really a pain when you migrate your INI into new version, something starts malfunctioning, and you have to manually compare your settings with fresh to possibly find what is the reason. Yet some settings could be changed years ago, so to compare-find such things is a real bother.
Considering how this may look like, here's an example from PoPlayer - its versions come not so often as XY, so each new version marks new/changed settings with bold. Same bold could be used to mark all settings that are changed compared to factory default settings. The option to mark settings could be called say by right-click on Help button in Configuration.

2023-09-17_111233.png (29.36 KiB) Viewed 1142 times

[admin]

Impossible. XY has no knowledge of its virgin state.

[DmFedorov]

Impossible. XY has no knowledge of its virgin state.

This is in response to a suggestion from eil, which showed an example of how something is highlighted in a new version in another application.
It looks like this is highlighting new settings or highlighting changes in the wording of these settings. But in any case, this is an example of comparing one version with another version.

My desire is to compare and (possibly) make a highlighting for the same XY version. I want to compare: The settings for a fresh installation (which I can see with my eyes if I insert the command into the address bar: fresh;) and the real settings of the current XY.

I can do this manually: save the current settings, and after the command fresh;, save the settings of a fresh instance, and then compare. But this doesn't help much. Because the configuration dialog settings are scattered throughout the XYplorer.ini and I can only guess which ini file keys correspond to specific configuration dialog settings.

Therefore, in order to see the changes, I have to set two Configuration dialogs (current and fresh) and section by section to compare the settings of the two dialogs with my eyes. This is very inconvenient, does not guarantee that I will not miss something, and most importantly does not give the whole picture of changes at once.

[DmFedorov]

OK, if all this is so difficult, can you do so to say the "easiest"?:
For those who want to compare something, make some kind of keyboard shortcut that will allow those users to save the contents of the "List of all settings" window, where before (or after) each entry there will be the corresponding key of ini-file.

That will be enough. No highlighting, but still an opportunity to quickly compare. Today this is only 590 records instead of 2634.
Although I think that the keys in the ini file will be much less, than the number of entries in the "List of all settings" window, because most of these entries are the names of sections and buttons within which are contained real settings associated with the keys from the ini file.

It will be easy to compare because most of the text on each line will be the same except for the key value in the ini file.

Perhaps in the future this will also help you in identifying those configuration settings that cause all sorts of errors that do not exist during a fresh installation.

[admin]

No. Impossible. XY is not built that way.

[GreetingsFromPoland]

hi!

Therefore, in order to see the changes, I have to set two Configuration dialogs (current and fresh) and section by section to compare the settings of the two dialogs with my eyes. This is very inconvenient, does not guarantee that I will not miss something, and most importantly does not give the whole picture of changes at once.

would it be helpful if you used something like WinMerge (https://winmerge.org/) to quickly compare the 2 files side-by-side ?

The "left side" would be the XYplorer.ini from C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\XYplorer\Fresh.
the "right side" would be the XYplorer.ini from C:\Users\...\AppData\Roaming\XYplorer.

the program (freeware) has a lot of options on how you can see the differences, export them, merge them, etc.

[DmFedorov]

would it be helpful if you used something like WinMerge ... ?

No, that's not gonna help. You will not be able to find among identical ini file keys (containing a difference in value) those keys that are related to Configuration. And even if you magically know which of these keys are related to the configuration you won't be able to guess what they are called in the configuration file, and it is highly unlikely that you will be able to link them to the translation.

Plus, even if everything is done properly when comparing the results will be scattered.
Below I've given an example where everything is numbered: ex. General=1, Tree and List=1-1, then subsection number, and after it number of item in subsection ]1

In this case it is possible to compare if you specify that everything after the ¦ character is not taken into account in the comparison. (in Araxis merge)

LastTab=0
LastFileTypes=0
ConfigLeft=0
ConfigTop=0
ShowSpecFolderLinks=1 ¦Links folder[1-1-3]1
ShowSpecFolderDesktop=1 ¦Desktop folder[1-1-3]2
ShowSpecFolderDocuments=1 ¦Documents folder[1-1-3]3
ShowSpecFolderDownloads=1 ¦Downloads folder[1-1-3]4
ShowSpecFolderOneDrive=1 ¦OneDrive folder[1-1-3]5
ShowSpecFolderUser=1 ¦User folder[1-1-3]6
ShowFloppies=0 ¦Floppy drives[1-1-3]9
ShowCDROMDrives=1 ¦CD-ROM drives[1-1-3]10
ShowHiddenDrives=0 ¦Hidden drives[1-1-3]11
ShowHiddenItems=1 ¦Hidden files and folders[1-1-3]12
ShowSystemItems=1 ¦System files and folders[1-1-3]13
HideProtectedOperatingSystemFiles=0 ¦Protected operating system files[1-1-3]14
ShowJunctions=1 ¦Junctions[1-1-3]15
ShowNethood=1 ¦Network folder[1-1-3]8
ShowRecycleBin=1 ¦Recycle Bin folder[1-1-3]7
ShowPortableDevices=1 ¦Portable devices[1-1-3]16
HideFoldersInList=0
; Tweak: show only available drives in Go | Drives...
PopupAvailableDrivesOnly=0
; Tweak:
PopupVisibleSpecFoldersOnly=0
ResolveNestedJunctions=1
GFHideItems=0
GFPatternList=".*"
GFIgnoreDiacritics=0
CustomDnDMenu=1 ¦Native drag and drop context menu[1-4-1]6
CustomItemsCtxMenu=1 ¦Custom items in the context menu[1-4-1]3
CustomItemsCtxMenuSelect=13546 ¦File List...[1-4-1]5
CustomItemsCtxMenuTreeSelect=781 ¦Folder Tree...[1-4-1]4
CtxMenuDefaultOnly=0 ¦Hide shell extensions from shell context menu[1-4-1]7
CtxMenuNative=0 ¦Native context menu[1-4-1]1

But even if you process the whole ini file in this way, still after a short period of time a lot can change.
Wording will change, new clauses will appear, old keys will be deleted or moved elsewhere.