[resent because previous mail was cut in the middle -- beta software
rules ;)]
Recently this group lacks bigger discussions, I'm starting to get
worried that there exist not many ideas about how to develop the
program further. So here is a buch of ideas. My favourite ideas. ;)
Some of them were already expressed in my previous emails, however
putting them in one place and describing them futher, appeared as a
good idea to me.
So Brian, if you could at least comment which of them sound nice for
you, we would have the idea about the future of FC. There it goes:
1. As concerns stored paths, that one can access with Ctrl+Number:
could you add envirinment variables support? I'd like to access %temp%
quickly, or %Userprofile% etc. It would be extremely useable! Also UNC
paths could be added, but it's a minor issue for me.
2. Unicode support. Of course as a text-mode application FC/W won't be
able to display all characters properly, but it should be able to
handle them. I'd like viewer and editor to support unicode encoded
files (such as *.reg files in Windows 2000 saved with default options
- they are AFAIK UTF-16 and start with hex FFFE characters).
Displaying of characters that exist in current codepage should be
possible and all other should be replaced with some mark that would
clearly indicate that there is a character that can't be displayed.
3. Related to above -- sometimes national characters I have in
filenames are broken when I see them in FC/W. Also often FC/W can't
access files with them, while they remain accessible by Explorer.
Could there be some problem with codepage translation or something?
4. Support for NTFS5 features: junction (displaying something like
"junctn" in files pane, instead of "subdir", not falling into a loop
when scanning drive with multiple junctions etc), displaying of owner
of files, editing it, supporting advanced attributes. Also support for
"alternative content" (or whatever it is called) - if you do:
echo AAA > file.txt
echo BBB > file.txt:sth
then the file file.txt has two contents: main, and the other in :sth
part. If you copy it within NTFS partition, everything is OK, but if
you copy it on FAT, then the alternative content is lost.
I'd like FC/W to:
-indicate on file list, that a specified file has an alt. content
-display alternative contents' names and allow to display/edit them
-manage copying do a non-supporting partitions - maybe an additional
file should be made? in the above example it could be file;sth.txt or
file(sth).txt.
-take alternative content into account when counting file sizes
5. Syntax highlighting in viewer/editor. For me: (X)HTML, JS, PHP, CSS
and RFC-822, but of course this should be editable. Yes, I have seen
the FTE editor. Not bad, but still it lacks some features that I have
in built-in editor.
6. Plug-in interface + an API open to everybody - this could actually
be a solution for many of the other wishes. Also if FC supported FAR
plugins, that would be a great leap forward, and this could make FC a
real danger for FAR.
7. Support for more platforms (i.e. Linux). Yeah, AFAIK there are no
plans to do that. A pity, since there seems to be no such a powerful
text-mode filemanager for Linux.
8. Support for some Windows related mechanisms in FC/W (perhaps
analogically in FC/2): for example right-click menu from Explorer.
Suppose I have WinZip options in right click menu -- why can't I have
them under F2 menu in FC/W too? There is a plugin for FAR to support
this. Why couldn't there be such thing in FC?
Right now when using FC/W I feel too separated from the rest of the
environment. In Explorer I can use other programs, that integrate into
it. Some level of such integration is what I miss in FC/W.
9. FTP support. FAR sollution is IMHO a good example - very useful.
10. Support for JAR archives (not Java ARchive, but a format used by
JAR by Robert Jung, the author of ARJ). AFAIK it's quite troublesome,
but if plug-in interface was implemented, I'm sure somebody would
write approriate shell.
11. Smal issue: an inconsistency in FC's interface. When you tag some
dirs and start copying them, their sizes are calculated and displayed
next to their names. Unfortunately the summary at the bottom isn't
updated, and still shows "0 bytes in 7 selected files".
That's it - more or less. Many of the points listed above require
making major changes in the program, so I'm worried that not all are
possible. What I lack right now is some indication about the future
development of FC -- are there going to be major upgrades or will
there only be small bugfixes and small improvements?
--
/ Krzysztof Trybowski pgp 0xE0F7733B /--/ To get my pgp key, put /
/ www.thebat.i.krakow.pl uin 4350719 /--/ "send_key" in subject. /_
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