Recognize periods as word breaks

[Mesh]

I have a really small request...


When you're in the process of manually renaming a file, hitting Ctrl-<Right/Left Arrow> moves the cursor one word at a time, and XY considers space characters as word breaks.

I would like to request that XY also consider periods as word breaks as well. There are enough unfortunately named files such as "this.is.the.name.of.this.file.txt", that it would be very helpful if XY recognized periods as word seperators.


Just my 0.0143 Euros (as per the exchange rate at the time of this posting).

[ivan]

I am in favour of this as part of integrating capitalisation in rename scripting command.

P.S. I think at the moment you can work around this by converting all the dots to spaces, doing whatever you have to do and then converting spaces back to dots

[Mesh]

P.S. I think at the moment you can work around this by converting all the dots to spaces, doing whatever you have to do and then converting spaces back to dots

If I'm working in large batches, then yes, I can do it this way. However, when working with files individually, this workaround adds a significant amount of complexity and steps to what would otherwise be a quick, on-the-fly rename.

[ivan]

If I'm working in large batches, then yes, I can do it this way. However, when working with files individually, this workaround adds a significant amount of complexity and steps to what would otherwise be a quick, on-the-fly rename.

Sure, I can understand where you're coming from. For now this is the shortest route that I can think of:
1. Assign a KS to this script

Code: Select all

rename s, "./ "

2. Do the rename you have to do.
3. Assign a KS to this script

Code: Select all

rename s, " /."

By the sounds of things, step 2 is a quick one and by assigning KSes to 1 & 3 you'll cut down on a lot of time.

Whether my shortcut is a shortcut for you or not, I hope your (and my) wish will get added soon

P.S. You can, of course, combine 1 & 3 and when you press a KS assigned you'll get a choice of which one to do.

[admin]

I would like to request that XY also consider periods as word breaks as well. There are enough unfortunately named files such as "this.is.the.name.of.this.file.txt", that it would be very helpful if XY recognized periods as word seperators.

Sounds good. Will do.

[ivan]

Sounds good. Will do.

This really needs to be added to scripting's "rename" command. The potential there is to be able to separate the parts of the file name (ex extension), assign each one to a temp variable, analyze and rename accordingly like you can currently do with VBScript.

[Mesh]

Sounds good. Will do.

Thanks, Don!

You know, I can't speak for anyone else here, but your responsiveness to bugs and user requests has often made me wish that you developed other apps as well. Um... maybe even operating systems.


If nothing else, I've found myself wondering during the occasional idle moment, if we brought a few other developers into a room and tied them down, would you be willing to lecture?

[graham]

mesh wrote:

You know, I can't speak for anyone else here, but your responsiveness to bugs and user requests has often made me wish that you developed other apps as well. Um... maybe even operating systems.


If nothing else, I've found myself wondering during the occasional idle moment, if we brought a few other developers into a room and tied them down, would you be willing to lecture?

You are so right about this and it defines why XY and other software developed by small teams is often so good. I am firmly of the opinion that big committee type development fails with a code mess - for XY it still has input from the users but just one guy making the decisions and he knows what he is doing unlike most major developers where the decision makers are technically useless and are more hype or marketing led! When it comes down to it, marketing is important, but unless the product is good we end up with Vista!
A lecture would be great but I fear the big developers are totally deaf and incompetent to recognise their problems are at the top and so they turn to marketing - thank you for XY it exists only because the big guys are so bad!

[Mesh]

A lecture would be great but I fear the big developers are totally deaf and incompetent to recognise their problems are at the top and so they turn to marketing - thank you for XY it exists only because the big guys are so bad!

Well, that's why I suggested tying them down.

[Mesh]

I just tried out 7.60.0040, and I found a bug.

XY now recognizes periods as word breaks, but it no longer recognizes spaces as word breaks anymore.


In addition, I don't know if this was part of XY's original behavior or not, but the current version also doesn't recognize underscore characters ("_") as word breaks either. If it didn't do that earlier, it should probably be added to the list of word break characters as well.

[ivan]

I have to say that I very much appreciate the effort that Don makes to keep XY being a great product.

However, for him this is business and that magic beer won't buy itself. I really hope that XY's userbase will grow exponentially, but taking care of dozens of thousands of clients is not a walk in the park. Eventually, he'll have to "grow" because I don't see "one guy doing everything" as sustainable in face of larger clientèle.

Anyway, back on topic:
since periods as word breaks are to do with rename special, I think all of those options should be possible through scripting

[ivan]

I just tried out 7.60.0040, and I found a bug.

XY now recognizes periods as word breaks, but it no longer recognizes spaces as word breaks anymore.


In addition, I don't know if this was part of XY's original behavior or not, but the current version also doesn't recognize underscore characters ("_") as word breaks either. If it didn't do that earlier, it should probably be added to the list of word break characters as well.

I created a thread in the bug section. For me spaces are recognised, but dots (is it better to call them periods?) don't work. Underscores fail to be identified as separators as well.

[calude]

While we are at it how about capitals as word breaks like

JimiHendrixHeyJoe.mp3

to
Jimi Hendrix Hey Joe.mp3

I use that but I really dont know if I'm alone at that
:=)

Calude

[admin]

I just tried out 7.60.0040, and I found a bug.

XY now recognizes periods as word breaks, but it no longer recognizes spaces as word breaks anymore.


In addition, I don't know if this was part of XY's original behavior or not, but the current version also doesn't recognize underscore characters ("_") as word breaks either. If it didn't do that earlier, it should probably be added to the list of word break characters as well.

I can choose any characters I want. I liked dot-only: allows you to dbl-click-select either the base or the extension.

[Mesh]

I can choose any characters I want. I liked dot-only: allows you to dbl-click-select either the base or the extension.

I understand, but I strongly disagree. The purpose of making this request was to make it easier to move through individual words during a manual renaming. Making periods the only seperation character recognized not only restores the original problem, but actually leaves XY worse than it was before, in this regard.

Perhaps you could compromise by making an INI entry that would allow the defining of any list of characters as word boundaries.


For example:

; All characters listed between double quotes will be considered word boundaries for all renaming purposes
WordBoundaryCharacters= " _()."