XYplorer Beta Club

Show Age is a nice feature, but it often loses its usefulness as the age grows.
The size column can also suffer from this which is why it has the ever useful flexible format.
Why not make date columns a little more limber?


I propose a tweak (eventually an option) that will be set to a user-specified number of seconds*.
Then when the user enables Show Age:
If the (absolute) age is less than the tweak's value the age is shown.
Otherwise the date is shown (obeying Show Weekday when enabled).

This would then, for instance, allow the user to see ages which are less than a day, weekdays for the rest of the week, and full dates beyond that.

*It might be more user-friendly and flexible if this accepted the date-shifting format of #u, where u is one of the supported units.


Why not use a custom column? It's certainly possible but it's a terrible experience as sorting, on the fly formatting changes, and translations become extremely difficult. Plus, it suffers a bigger performance hit than the native columns.

Cool idea!

Curious: What limit would you set?

I'm thinking I'd start with 1 day and see how things go.

In a custom column I was experimenting with 1w, 1d, and 1h. They were all rather useful, but 1d really seemed to hit the sweet spot of being helpful without requiring much thought.

Though that might also be because I already have my color filters set up to do some age-based shading (<1h, <6h, <12h, <1d, <4d, <7d).


I could also see 1y being popular since there's a big enough difference between 366 days and 547 days (if rounding, else 729) that an age of "1 year" isn't quite precise enough.

I could also see 1y being popular since there's a big enough difference between 366 days and 547 days (if rounding, else 729) that an age of "1 year" isn't quite precise enough.

True. Age at times becomes irrelevant if you have lots of file that would end up with the same age. Hence, it would be better to keep the value in mins instead of seconds

I would prefer a flexible age instead (days / months / weeks ). A 2.5 year old files age either as 910 days/ 130 weeks / 30 months.

nerdweed wrote:I would prefer a flexible age instead (days / months / weeks ). A 2.5 year old files age either as 910 days/ 130 weeks / 30 months.

Or maybe factorize: 2.5 years = 2 years, 6 months

Marco wrote:Or maybe factorize: 2.5 years = 2 years, 6 months

In theory that sounds like a nice idea but it tends to get to be a large text if you start with multiple time units.
I'd rather go with 30 months in that case, I guess...

Added the tweaks:

1) Age Limit à la TheQwerty.
2) Show fractions à la Marco: 2.5 years.

I have personally set the age limit to 24 hours, and it's brilliant! It will be turned on from now on to eternity. It seems to match how my brain deals with age.

I want to have Age Limit (to be entered in hours) in the configuration, probably under "Styles". Any suggestions how to call it?

[x] Only show ages less than: [#] hours (My choice of the lot.)
[x] Only show ages younger than: [#] hours
[x] Limit ages to: [#] hours
Similar to: Configuration | Preview | Video preview | Preview static frame, skip

Maximum age to show in hours [#]
Similar to: Configuration | File Info Tips | Initial delay in milliseconds

[#] Maximum age to show (in hours)
Similar to: Configuration | Tabs | Delay before a dragged-over tab is auto-selected (in milliseconds)

The first three are nice because they make it easy to toggle the limit on or off without changing the value. Granted this could (maybe even should) be made a separate menu item to allow on-the-fly toggling.

The last is best for the whole varying translation lengths problem.

The middle seems to be odd man out, but it really illustrates that config could use a consistency pass.

Wow, in-depth reply!

But too late. Okay, I could change it, but since it's all done and finished I will upload it now as is:
Configuration | Styles | Limit for Show Age in hours (0 = unlimited)

Let me know if it's unacceptable.

admin wrote:Wow, in-depth reply!

But too late. Okay, I could change it, but since it's all done and finished I will upload it now as is:
Configuration | Styles | Limit for Show Age in hours (0 = unlimited)

Let me know if it's unacceptable.

That makes it more similar to Configuration | Styles | Autosize columns maximum width (0 = unlimited), but the wording feels slightly off by comparison. It's not unacceptable but these feel closer:

Show Age maximum hours (0 = unlimited)
Show Age maximum in hours (0 = unlimited)

I think without 'in' works a bit better.

Thanks!

admin wrote:1) Age Limit à la TheQwerty.
2) Show fractions à la Marco: 2.5 years.

1) Sweet! Works so much better than my custom column version. Thank you.
2) Not for me. It's also missing something:

; Tweak: Number of decimal places used by 'Show Age'. (Default = 0)

TheQwerty wrote: 2) Not for me. It's also missing something:

; Tweak: Number of decimal places used by 'Show Age'. (Default = 0)

Confirmed.

You mean it does not work?

admin wrote:You mean it does not work?

It works! I was only pointing out that it's missing a comment in the INI file, so it is not only an undocumented tweak but also a tweak in hiding.