Tab displaying issues

[zer0]

YES, there is! Sorry, but just because you may not understand/recognize that the problem exists doesn't make it go away...

The fact that you don't see drive letter if 'Display folder name only' is ticked isn't a problem. It wasn't designed to do that, so you can't hold that against it. It may be an inconvenience, but that doesn't make it a problem.

It IS a problem when you have the same named folders on multiple drives which occurs often and easily...And we have NOT said that the existing option needs to be changed, but rather that a new variant needs to be created.

You can show the full tab path, you can call a tab what you want, you can hover over it to make sure that you don't confuse a tab with another tab.

And I'm saying for the upteenth time that those ways are not workable and/or practical!

Why aren't they workable or practical? For tabs that don't change you can rename them and for paths that do change you can hover over. How did you manage before this functionality came onboard?

Because while path compression may or may not be ideal, it's just NOT related to this issue! We don't want the path compression option...we just want the lowest level folder and the highest level qualifier in the path...no more...no less...just those two parts of the path...they provide all the data we need to know where we are when operating in this mode, ok?

And through better path compression that's what you should get: "C:\...\Folder" (or similar). The end result of what you want can be achieved through algorithm improvements. As per my example, you get your drive letter and lowest folder. What's wrong with that?

Maybe that's a problem, because we may have referred to it as a sub-option when in fact, it may be more correctly an alternate option choice instead....there are two choices right now: Display folder name only -or- not. We want choice #3: Display drive & folder.

Your choice is much wider: you can name a folder any name that you want. Renaming a tab was introduced 4 & 1/2 years ago, so it withstood the test of time. You can even include illegal characters in its name if you so desire.

It may appear a waste to you but not to Stephan & myself (and maybe others)...adding approx two extra characters will make the tab header much more meaningful and useful while still keeping it a minimal length...and since you appear to believe that having the drive letter in a tab header isn't needed, why not thus suggest that we remove it always? That's silly, you say? Well, if you agree that having it there is needed, then why say that it's not needed in this case?

You can add any number of characters that you want if you rename a tab. I believe that when 'Display folder name only' is ticked only the folder name must be shown in tab header. You can have the full path (with drive letter shown), you can have this short "one folder" path. For everything else there's 'Rename tab'.

I agree we can't make XY fit everyones needs but here's a simple way to make it more productive without affecting anyone else, other than one more option in Config that they can ignore if they wish...and path shortening/compression is not the issue we are dealing with...that's an unrelated issue to this desired option as it deals with showing full paths or as much as possible thereof, whereas we want only two fixed parts of the path.

Just because users are free to ignore an option in Config doesn't justify its addition. Once again, you're brushing of path compression unjustly. If the full path in a tab is longer than a tab's width then it's compressed. The way it is compressed is what needs to be discussed instead. Like Don said: show him a badly-compressed path and what you'd like it to be. It's bad product design to invent an extra layer to put on top just because current way may inconvenience you and you're not willing to engage with Don on improving the algorithm.

[admin]

Well. I played around with this a little and could see a use of a user definable format for tab headers. Still on tweak level, you can try it out by doing this in your INI file (in the NEXT version):

Code: Select all

TabFolderNameOnly=2

Currently the format is hard-coded to

Code: Select all

<drive>: <folder>

where <drive> covers drives and servers.

[Stefan]

And through better path compression that's what you should get: "C:\...\Folder" (or similar). The end result of what you want can be achieved through algorithm improvements. As per my example, you get your drive letter and lowest folder. What's wrong with that?

If Don wants to solve this issue with an better algorithm it should be fine for me (us?) too.
But still i think just to [optionally] prefix the current folder with the drive letter would be the easiest way of implementation.

I with zer0 here: if anything then the compression algo should be improved. However, I cannot see how. I think it works very well at the moment, and much better than Windows's own algo. So, please give an example of a path that's not compressed to your liking, and tell what is your liking.

Don> So, please give an example
If i would use the following settings
i miss the drive letter or the server name for "Flexible Width" Tabs:

"Tools > Configuration... > Tabs"
"[_250] Max Tab width"
"[X] Flexible Width"
"[ ] Display Folder name only"

Flexible width
If enabled tabs will only be as wide as necessary to show the full caption.

TabsDisplayIssue005.PNG (36.68 KiB) Viewed 1934 times

This should be displayed something like:
[C::xypl..] [E::Bild..] [D::renam..] [C::syst..] [H::syst..] [X::syst..] [X::syst..] [C::renam..] [\\nas1::ren..]


But for others (home users?) this may be to much noise.
So would be fine if this caption could be configurable (in the ini).

---

Next issue here is, since an full server name could need some space,
i dreaming about an Auto-Rename-Tab feature to shrink long server names
like \\CompanyServerWork1\ to just \\csw1\ ... but for this i will open an new thread.

[Stefan]

Sorry Don, i wrote too slowly.

And thank you, i will try this.

[PeterH]

Well. I played around with this a little and could see a use of a user definable format for tab headers. ...

Thanks! I didn't read all that was written, sorry. I think it was easy to see that both parties had (some ) good arguments - so "user definable" is the solution for this.

[admin]

Well. I played around with this a little and could see a use of a user definable format for tab headers. Still on tweak level, you can try it out by doing this in your INI file (in the NEXT version):

Code: Select all

TabFolderNameOnly=2

Currently the format is hard-coded to

Code: Select all

<drive>: <folder>

where <drive> covers drives and servers.

So, did anybody try it??

TabFolderNameOnly=2

...

[serendipity]

Well. I played around with this a little and could see a use of a user definable format for tab headers. Still on tweak level, you can try it out by doing this in your INI file (in the NEXT version):

Code: Select all

TabFolderNameOnly=2

Currently the format is hard-coded to

Code: Select all

<drive>: <folder>

where <drive> covers drives and servers.

So, did anybody try it??

TabFolderNameOnly=2

...

Yes, but My computer shows up as "M: My Computer" in the tab.

[tomuser]

.. and D: Desktop; M: My Network Places

Going further with this tweak it would be nice to have option to show drive letter and also first folder of displayed (last) folder. For example if I have such structures: C:\Programs\Portable\XYPlorer and D:\TEST\Beta\XYplorer then being in XYplorer folder tab heards were something like this: C:\Programs\ \Xyplorer and D:\TEST\ \Xyplorer

[admin]

Ok, "M: My Computer" and "M: My Network Places" need a little tuning...

And let me add that -- to my own surprise -- I start to like this new way of showing the tab locations. Especially since I have this wide screen (22") with 1920 pixels horizontal space. I have distributed my digital life over 4 disks (C=system, D=web, E=coding, F=fun), so having the drive letter there gives me good quick hint.

[admin]

Going further with this tweak it would be nice to have option to show drive letter and also first folder of displayed (last) folder. For example if I have such structures: C:\Programs\Portable\XYPlorer and D:\TEST\Beta\XYplorer then being in XYplorer folder tab heards were something like this: C:\Programs\ \Xyplorer and D:\TEST\ \Xyplorer

Well, now it's really bordering madness... I strongly suggest to try out the built compression which does a good job here IMO.

[serendipity]

Ok, "M: My Computer" and "M: My Network Places" need a little tuning...

And let me add that -- to my own surprise -- I start to like this new way of showing the tab locations. Especially since I have this wide screen (22") with 1920 pixels horizontal space. I have distributed my digital life over 4 disks (C=system, D=web, E=coding, F=fun), so having the drive letter there gives me good quick hint.

Yup, i like it too. I think this will be my default set up for now. Thanks for those who supported this idea, quite intuitive to me.

[Stefan]

Oh! THIS NEXT version?
Yes i test it now (but without shares right now... will follow on monday)

TabsDisplayIssue006.PNG (14.81 KiB) Viewed 1888 times

Thanks for all the discuss and the implementation.


Improvement idea discuss:
For me even the space after the ":" could be dropped ===> <drive>:<folder>

---
Related or new thread?
Those "..." use too much space while having a few tabs open.
Could they be dropped too, or Isn't there an option to see the full folder name
and scroll the tabs horizontally with little arrows <|> inside the pane?
Or i haven't found the right settings/ini-tweak right now?

[j_c_hallgren]

Thanks for all the discuss and the implementation.

As you know, I spent a fair amount of time promoting this idea as I saw the merit in it...glad it worked out!

Improvement idea discuss:
For me even the space after the ":" could be dropped ===> <drive>:<folder>

Even though the space takes room, I think it helps emphasize the point quickly/clearly that there is part of the path that isn't shown and not having that makes it less so...yes, it's true a path almost always has the slash in it, but one could miss that on quick glance so I'd keep the space as a better separator of the drive and folder name.

[PeterH]

Improvement idea discuss:
For me even the space after the ":" could be dropped ===> <drive>:<folder>

Even though the space takes room, I think it helps emphasize the point quickly/clearly that there is part of the path that isn't shown and not having that makes it less so...yes, it's true a path almost always has the slash in it, but one could miss that on quick glance so I'd keep the space as a better separator of the drive and folder name.

But can't this be seen by the missing \ (not) following c:

[j_c_hallgren]

But can't this be seen by the missing \ (not) following c:

I thought I'd plainly explained my view on that in the post you quoted: It can be seen but may be overlooked more easily...the space makes it hard to not notice...remember that some of us don't have eagle-eye vison so sometimes little things like that can be of more significance.