User Menus

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cyberclops
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Post by *cyberclops »

For years I have used Norton Commander and over the past few years I have been looking for a Windows Based replacement that is both fully featured and reasonable priced. I few day ago I came across Total Commander and have been very impressed with it. There is however one Norton Commanderish thing that I would like to be able to do and in my cursory use of Total Commander I can not figure out how to do it ...

Norton Commander allowed the user to define menus. Any directory could have its own local menu, and a global menu could be and used for any directory that did not have a local one. Over the years I have relied on this feature heavily and am hoping the Total Commander has a similar feature that I have overlooked this far.

Thanks in advance,

Lowell Dennis
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Post by *ghisler(Author) »

Welcome in our forum!
There is a global menu in TC, the "Starter" menu. In addition, there is a directory hotlist (Ctrl+D) and history list (Alt+Cursor down), and a button bar. There are no local menus, though. What were they used for in NC? I never used NC, I used a similar Shareware program from Germany so I don't know this feature...
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Post by *pdavit »

>Ghisler
> I used a similar Shareware program from Germany…

Was it DCC Christian?!! :) :) :) (http://www.emerge.de/dcc.htm)

Oh! By the way the Windows-based version (http://www.emerge.de/dccwin.htm) is very interesting as a project (just for academic purposes!)
Last edited by pdavit on 2003-02-06, 23:05 UTC, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: User Menus

Post by *CopyCats »

Hi Lowell,
cyberclops wrote:Norton Commander allowed the user to define menus
So does Total Commander, just not any directory-specific menus. See chapter 4c of the helpfile for information on adapting the main menu to your needs. I thought I'd mention this because it wasn't clear from your message if you'd already discovered this option.
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Post by *ghisler(Author) »

pdavit wrote:Was it DCC Christian!! :) :) :)
Yes it was, I even registered it. 8)
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Post by *cyberclops »

Here is how things worked in NC ...
Each item in the menu had an hot key (up to two characters), a lablel, and a series of commands. The user navigated to the desired directory and then pressed the F2 key which did one of two things: if there was a menu file in the current directory this menu would be loaded and processed; if not, the global/main menu stored in the NC directory would be loaded and executed.

For example, if I had a menu that had an item with a hotkey of 'M', and label of 'make program', and a command of 'make -m', upon pressing F2 a menu with a line 'M Make program' would pop up. I could then use the arrow keys to select the item and press enter, click on the item with the mouse, or type 'M' on the keyboard.

You turned me on to your start menus. I have played around with them a little and they will probably work for what I need. However, it would be nice to be able to use some other hot key other than Ctrl-Alt-F# or to have a special hotkey and character key interface like NC had. This way I could assign Ctrl-Atl-M or F2,M to my make command which is a lot easier to remember.

Please do not take this as a big gripe against the tool. For 90% of what I do it will work great, and the other 10% is doable albiet a little unintuitive. All in all TC is a great program.
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Post by *cyberclops »

Oh, one other thing ...

I noticed on the start menu you can select to run minimized or run maximized ... Is there anyway to keep the window after the command ends so that you can view the output (like pressing Shift+Enter when a command is entered manually).
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And those who do not.
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Post by *pdavit »

The up-coming version of TC (v5.51) will have a small surprise for you cyberclops which will increase the functionality of TC on user menu issues. Just some patience my friend as Christian has currently an added workload from this new forum.

Only time will tell! ;)

Edited: I’ve noticed you are from Texas. My greatest sympathy for the tragic accident of the Columbia space shuttle.
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Post by *Valentino »

cyberclops wrote:However, it would be nice to be able to use some other hot key other than Ctrl-Alt-F# or to have a special hotkey and character key interface like NC had. This way I could assign Ctrl-Atl-M or F2,M to my make command which is a lot easier to remember.
You can do almost the same in TC: "Alt+S" opens Start menu, then you can press the initial letter of your command's title to invoke that command. For example, if you have Start menu entry "Make my program" you can press Alt+S,M.
You can also use & sign in command titles, like "Ma&ke my program". In this case you can activate it by pressing "Alt+S,K". You can use this "&" if you have several commands whose titles start with the same letter.
One more note: if you have "Quick search (current dir): Alt+Letters" option on, you'll have to press "Alt,S,M" to activate the command (separate pressing "Alt" and "S").

To prevent closing the window after command terminates you can use the following (at least under Win NT4, 2000, XP):
Command: cmd.exe
Parameters: /k make.exe -m ........
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Post by *ghisler(Author) »

cyberclops wrote:Here is how things worked in NC ...
Each item in the menu had an hot key (up to two characters), a lablel, and a series of commands. The user navigated to the desired directory and then pressed the F2 key which did one of two things: if there was a menu file in the current directory this menu would be loaded and processed; if not, the global/main menu stored in the NC directory would be loaded and executed.
Could this directory menu access the selected files? If not, you can solve this with a simple batch file called usermenu.bat or so, which you place in every dir where you need it, and pass the file name under the cursor to it as a parameter. The batch file can then implement a simple menu, e.g. with the choice command.
cyberclops wrote:I noticed on the start menu you can select to run minimized or run maximized ... Is there anyway to keep the window after the command ends so that you can view the output (like pressing Shift+Enter when a command is entered manually).
Put the program name in a batch file, e.g. program.bat. Then press Alt+Enter on that batch file, and check the option to keep the window open. Or even better, uncheck this option, and add a second line to the batch file reading
pause
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Post by *batchman61 »

Hi,

i'm using "local" button bars (_local.bar) for directory specific functionality.

The main button bar (wincmd.ini [Buttonbar] Buttonbar=xxx) holds an entry which points to a local bar file (cmd**=.\_local.bar). This local bar points back to the main bar and stores all directory specific items.
The only disadvantage for me is the static "back to main bar". A more dynamic approach would need a "invoked from" placeholder in the button bar definition.
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Post by *sqa_wizard »

if there was a menu file in the current directory this menu would be loaded and processed; if not, the global/main menu stored in the NC directory would be loaded and executed
Sounds very interesting ...

What is the exact filename and syntax of those directory specific menues ?

Up to now TC already scans the directory for descript.ion files and evaluates it.

Why not scan for directory specific menue file on pressing a special key and popup the menu ?

Sounds quiite easy to implement ...
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Post by *Geoffrey »

Hi,

Another feature I would find useful in user menus: would it be possible to apply the same command to selected files, instead of just the file under the cursor ?
I tried to look at it from the help but couldn't find anything about it. I guess it should not be so difficult to implement, since built-in commands already work this way

Regards,
Geoffrey
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Post by *Hacker »

Hey,
You could try lst2multi from http://www.ghisler.com/tools.htm#other .

HTH
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Post by *Geoffrey »

Thanks for the tip, it might be useful.

However, it does not solve my problem, since the program I try to execute takes itself the input file as an option argument (of the form input=...)

Regards,
Geoffrey
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