XYplorer Beta Club

I am very used to this feature in Directory Opus and would love to see it in directory opus.

Essentially, I press F2 to edit, this selects the filename before the extension which is great. What i would love the down arrow key to do is that context now jumps to the item below the current edit, with the item below now having the filename before it's extension highlighted.


This makes editing many files much easier. The current behaviour is that when you press down it just 'unselects' the filename which is a lot less useful.

Any chance of this minor tweak?

spamalam wrote:I am very used to this feature in Directory Opus and would love to see it in directory opus.

Huh?? You meant XY at end of that sentence, right?

spamalm wrote:Essentially, I press F2 to edit, this selects the filename before the extension which is great. What i would love the down arrow key to do is that context now jumps to the item below the current edit, with the item below now having the filename before it's extension highlighted.

I presume that English is not your native language, as I've read that second sentence numerous times and still don't understand it...sorry!
FYI: Pressing down arrow deselects the name so one can delete trailing chars on the file name portion, otherwise use of Delete after F2 would erase the entire name...the functions of arrow keys after F2 was the subject of a LONG and involved discussion some months ago and the current setup provides the best combination for all power users that were involved in that thread, as I understand it.

spamalm wrote:
This makes editing many files much easier. The current behaviour is that when you press down it just 'unselects' the filename which is a lot less useful.

Any chance of this minor tweak?

Since I was unable to follow/understand your request, I don't see how this would make things easier at this point...while the unselect IS useful as is, and I use it often.

What I believe spamalam means is that once you have edited the name of a file, pressing the down arrow accepts your changes and moves on to the next file in the list, automatically going into edit mode again. Effectively the same as hitting ENTER to accept changes, pressing the down arrow, and hitting F2 again.

I could see this as a useful feature.

Cheers,

D

CitizenD, your translation makes sense, but that functionality would thus affect the ability to quickly make the actual desired edits to filename, IMO!

Since the use of down arrow to deselect and move to right end is a function that would thus be much harder to accomplish, right?

---Or--- hitting the down arrow by accident while moving left/right while editing would thus update the name and move to another file, which could REALLY screw up files, if one had made errors...

Maybe scriptable hotkeys would be the answer for this, so user could combine three existing functions in one CKS, but still keeping the individual component functions available for other users...

BTW, I just found that other thread: http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?t=1231
where we discussed Rename arrow behavior...

I kinda like the idea of this, but it would conflict with the very useful functionality of pressing the down arrow when you're renaming.

Perhaps something like Ctrl+Enter could enable this functionality? At least then you have to hit Enter for the rename to stick

lukescammell wrote:Perhaps something like Ctrl+Enter could enable this functionality? At least then you have to hit Enter for the rename to stick

Yeah, I think this would be nice. It would fulfill the idea of going on rename mode for the next item, which may be nice for a manual multi-renaming job, while still using the Enter key which holds the "validating" idea.

One thing for sure, don't touch how the arrow keys work now, they're just great!

CitizenD wrote:What I believe spamalam means is that once you have edited the name of a file, pressing the down arrow accepts your changes and moves on to the next file in the list, automatically going into edit mode again. Effectively the same as hitting ENTER to accept changes, pressing the down arrow, and hitting F2 again.

I could see this as a useful feature.

Cheers,

D

That's it.
See directory opus.

I'd disagree and say the down arrow is pretty useless as it stands, since it jumps to the end plus+1. If you press end you can jump the the end of the current edit:

ie.
this.is.the.name.exe

pressing F2
this.is.the.name.exe

pressing down:
this.is.the.name.|exe

pressing end:
this.is.the.name.exe|

Pressing home and up do the same thing:
|this.is.the.name.exe

So the functionality of up and down are wasteful/less useful.

Try it:
http://www.gpsoft.com.au/
The down arrow to go to the next word works very, very well. I think its a much better solution than ctrl+enter would be, especially when your editing lots of file.

I don't understand exactly what the down key is acheiving. It doesn't jump to the point after editing, it jumps to the end+1, after the period.

spamalam wrote:I'd disagree and say the down arrow is pretty useless as it stands. If you press end you can jump the the end of a current word.

No, you're wrong. The way those keys work is really pretty usefull, though it might not occur to you how cool it is if you do not have the option "Exclude extension on rename" enabled (Config/Advanced)

Because when you do, pressing F2 will select only the base part of the filename, excluding the extension. Pretty awesome thing, since to rename "foo.doc" into "bar.doc" all you need to do is press F2, then "foo", and Enter to validate!

And then comes into play this other great XY unique feature : when using the Up and Down keys, the selection will be lost and the caret will be put:
- using Down key, to the right of the selection (ie. will leave the caret on its current position)
- using Up key, to the left of the selection (ie. will move the caret to the beginning)

Thus you can unselect the selection without moving the caret at all by simply pressing the Down key.

Just saw your edit: now, pressing Down does not move after the dot, it simply unselect what was selected, so the carret is BEFORE the dot. Allowing one to add a suffix, or change it, etc

Yes, Home and Up do the same.

I don't think using the keys to validate & move on to the next file is a good solution, I would agree with Ctrl+Enter, as I said before, or why not when using PageUp & PageDown.

But the way the arrow keys work is really useful as it is now, and since the Left/Right one affect the selection/caret only, having the Up/Down one validate any changes made and enter rename more for another file doesn't sound like such a good idea to me...

can an option be added to enabled the functionality then please or the current functionality be moved to another key? I find it a very annoying "feature" since its not behaving like i'd expect it to, and would prefer the opus-style one. It proves much better for multiple file edits. Give it a try and see what you think.

Alternatively, if the down key is pressed twice it could move onto the next file (same goes for the redundant up key), since once you hit down once the key is now pointless as it doesn't do anything. That's less than perfect though but better than what we have now. Ctr+enter is going to prove extremely tedious, it needs to be a single key press ideally and that's going to have you reaching over the keyboard. Ctrl for the current down action might suit better. I thought down and up, as navigation keys, were the most appropriate (i guess the Directory Opus guys did too) but there seems to resistance to that idea.

The lack of it means simply renaming a series of files is less intuitive, and the batch renamer isn't very appropriate for most renaming tasks. I use the down key in opus to skip through the files to rename, for example.

here's another one:
ctrl+down = current down functionality
down = next file, with filename highlighted (barring extension)
ctrl+up = current up functionality
up = previous file, with filename highlighted (barring extension)

It makes much more sense that way since left, right, up and down are all navigation

I've just edited 50 files in directory opus that would take a long time in XY, and prove very tedious if i had to hit ctrl+enter

spamalam wrote:It makes much more sense that way since left, right, up and down are all navigation

Actually no, it doesn't make more sense. Not really. It just suits your needs better

IMO the best is to keep arrow keys as they are now, as they all means "navigation within the editbox".
And maybe have Ctrl+Enter, or Ctrl+Up/Down, or PageUp/PageDown to do what you want : validate the rename operation and move to the next(/previous) file, on rename mode.

Note that this is only my own opinion, but i would strongly advice against changing the Up/Down keys as I think this would be a much less "natural"/obvious behavior.

Besides, what if I'm on list view? Why would then Right/Left not validate and move to the file on the right/left? Because it's sounds awfully illogic? Well, to me having Up/Down behaves as such falls into the same category...

spamalam wrote:can an option be added to enabled the functionality then please or the current functionality be moved to another key? I find it a very annoying "feature" since its not behaving like i'd expect it to, and would prefer the opus-style one.

While you might find it annoying the way it's working right now or not as expected, I would find it annoying and unexpected the other way! ... Because I normally expect ENTER to be used to confirm and lock in my changes, not some other keys...

spamalam wrote:Alternatively, if the down key is pressed twice it could move onto the next file (same goes for the redundant up key), since once you hit down once the key is now pointless as it doesn't do anything. That's less than perfect though but better than what we have now.

Not quite...I often hit keys a second time without realizing it so having it do something else the second time would be an issue for me.

spamalam wrote:Ctr+enter is going to prove extremely tedious, it needs to be a single key press ideally and that's going to have you reaching over the keyboard. Ctrl for the current down action might suit better. I thought down and up, as navigation keys, were the most appropriate (i guess the Directory Opus guys did too) but there seems to resistance to that idea.

You are correct on the resistance!
The problem is that Cntl+down is already in use to move within the editbox also...remember, this is XY, not DO, so there will be some differences...Xy can do some things DO can't and vice versa...

spamalam wrote:The lack of it means simply renaming a series of files is less intuitive, and the batch renamer isn't very appropriate for most renaming tasks. I use the down key in opus to skip through the files to rename, for example.

Less intuitive to you perhaps, but maybe not to those coming from Win Expl...

As I suggested in prior post, there may a solution to this customization issue via CKS and/or scriptable hotkeys...

So navigation keys not doing actual navigation is more intuitive? That seems odd, especially now when you hit down once the key is now redundant and has no functionality. On top of that, you also have two keys doing exactly the same thing in the current setup, HOME and up do the same thing and the functionality of going to previous and next now requires three key presses in each case.

So based on that i'd also claim the current system wastes the up and down keys.

this is XY, not DO, so there will be some differences..

Yes, but in this regard DO is doing a far better job hence why I suggested it's a feature that would be extremely useful.

It seems like my only option is to convert back to Directory Opus for file editing then? Filename editing is a core feature of a filemanager afterall. Or use a third party app to override default behaviour?

I would greatly appreciate having the ability to either remap the less intuitive functionality and put on a quick edit functionality. Or if you release the source i could always patch it myself hehe..

And maybe have Ctrl+Enter, or Ctrl+Up/Down, or PageUp/PageDown to do what you want :

I'd hate that because your having to reach all over the keyboard to achieving something that is performed much more regularly than the current use of up and down. Its the current up+down functionality that is the rarity surely, not the editing multiple filenames. At least i'd be utterly amazed if it wasn't.

Same goes for 'scripting' a chain of keys, they usually don't respond fast at all but i'd be interested to see.

Sounds like the best solution that will annoy the least set is simply to have a "quick filename navigation" checkbox in options, or a keyremapper option with the ability to map down to go to next item in edit mode. It doesn't have to be in quick edit mode by default

Why would then Right/Left not validate and move to the file on the right/left? Because it's sounds awfully illogic?

Try it in Directory Opus, its previous (up) and next (down), and left (before) and right (after). They also have the same excluding of filename. Works brilliantly. I assume that's why they implemented it like that. Put 50 files bung them in a directory and rename them all, with a non-standard pattern. A couple of them sequentially, a couple of them completely, the rest just minor tweaks/removals/additions. See how long it takes with the current system. Edit, enter, down, f2, edit, copy, enter, down f2... takes ages for something that takes a much shorter time in DO. Now imagine having to hit ctrl+enter, your going to end up with carpel tunnel. While i'm growing to prefer XY in a lot of areas, this is one where its proving substantially weaker/slower. Batch proves decent enough for a set renaming patern.

I ask you to play with DO system and see what you think, it really is better for mass edits.

Less intuitive to you perhaps, but maybe not to those coming from Win Expl...

Maybe is certainly the word to use, and for people coming from explorer such a change will be the least of their confusion Explorer's implementation of things is bad remember, that's why we've all opted to replace it; keeping a bad editing system for the sake of sticking close to explorer isn't a good thing imo.

keeping something like Explorer for the sake of it is a terrible idea imo.

Actually, I like jacky's suggestion of using Page Up/Down for this functionality.

Cheers,

D