XYplorer Beta Club

lukescammell wrote:

admin wrote:

lukescammell wrote:<opinion>I honestly believe that XY should support reading and writing ZIP files because they are so common and EVERY file manager under the sun supports them to a basic extract/create level. I do believe this is a now standard feature of file managers and that XY missing this functionality makes it look bad.</opinion>

But don't forget: Not having something that every other file manager has makes XYplorer surely more notable!

but notable in a bad way

I have WinZip ever since, and I don't miss anything about zipping. It sits in my context menu and does the job. At what exact point of my workflow would I have any advantage in XYplorer natively supporting zip?

Or are you talking about those that do not have a separate zipping software? I think that should be very few users and certainly not users that would care about an alternative file manager, or? WinZip is about the very first software I install on a fresh system...

I also have a strong dislike for files acting as folders and cluttering my tree view (as ZIP files would do with integrated zip support, right?).

<blahblah>And, BTW, my personal likings matter in XYplorer development. I (almost, with very few exceptions) never add a feature that does not convince me and does not fit my personal work style. That's because (1) I'm a egoist, (2) writing software is a creative act for me, and I get deep satisfaction from the process and the result, (3) I think it gives the product a certain integrity if I am the all-mighty thumbs-up/down judge.
That's why I do not add features only because all others have them or because people are pestering me since years to add them (DP... ). XYplorer would become a formless heap of bloat then, I think.
Of course, I can only hope that my workstyle is not so crazy that XY's uniqueness becomes the bizarre creation of a mad man...
</blahblah>

I understand and respect your blah blah blah and agree that this is the main reason for XYs excellence, the other main reason is that you listen to people even though you are an egotist ("the id is strong in this one").

I also hate zip FILES acting as folders and showing up in the tree. I don't want that kind of functionality - a simple "Add to zip" "Extract from zip" on the context menu would most likely suffice. You could reasonably default the compression to maximum nowadays or even medium if you didn't want to allow people config options.

Because XY is a portable file manager it makes it incredibly useful to use in across a wide range of systems. However, each time you encounter a zip file it's different, so an additional benefit in workflow (perhaps not for you if you only use one system) would be things behaving exactly as you expect, each and every time you encounter a zip file.

At the end of the day, I hate being dragged out of XY into WE to deal with zip files because, at the end of the day, WE's UI sucks and is the main reason I started looking for a replacement in the first place!

Just about all file archivers interfaces suck as badly, if not worse than WE. In an ideal world I could add a dll (or something) to a folder called "plugins" under the XY root and have "native" handling of zip, RAR, 7z, gz, bz2 and a whole host of other archivers that I end up using on a fairly regular basis.

I, and probably others, keep harping on about archive support in XY because we' LOVE to be able to use the fantastic file management interface in our archivers as well.

lukescammell wrote:I also hate zip FILES acting as folders and showing up in the tree. I don't want that kind of functionality - a simple "Add to zip" "Extract from zip" on the context menu would most likely suffice. You could reasonably default the compression to maximum nowadays or even medium if you didn't want to allow people config options.

Because XY is a portable file manager it makes it incredibly useful to use in across a wide range of systems. ...

Okay, I got that point. Understood.

But a simple "Add to zip" "Extract from zip" on the context menu? ... think again: that won't do it. Context menu of what file? Add to which Zip? Create a new zip: needs a name. Extract which file? Needs a listing of zip contents. Once there's a listing, people want to see all columns they are used to see in an archiver's contents listing... and then they want password protection. Etc. You see... Zipping logic is not that simple. Quickly I'm looking at weeks of work, work that's already perfectly done by numerous zipping softwares.

If you show me a real simple way (UI logic/design) to support archiving I will reconsider it. I would not even need a plugin, by the way. I have the zipping and unzipping routines ready in raw code!

lukescammell wrote:

admin wrote:

lukescammell wrote:<opinion>I honestly believe that XY should support reading and writing ZIP files because they are so common and EVERY file manager under the sun supports them to a basic extract/create level. I do believe this is a now standard feature of file managers and that XY missing this functionality makes it look bad.</opinion>

But don't forget: Not having something that every other file manager has makes XYplorer surely more notable!

but notable in a bad way

Ted Bundy is also notable in a bad way, but he is in Wikipedia.

admin wrote:If you show me a real simple way (UI logic/design) to support archiving I will reconsider it. I would not even need a plugin, by the way. I have the zipping and unzipping routines ready in raw code!

This may take me some time as work's still manic, but I'll see what I can come up with.