It's Time To Make The Leap: 'Directories' to 'Folders'

[Phred]

With, for example, references to October 2006 still persisting on the Total Commander text-based home page, TC is showing its age.

Scattered throughout TC's interface and its dialogues, and through its Help, is a mixture of references to 'directories' and to 'Folders' - singular and plural.

Isn't it time that Author starts up his text editor on the entire code-base and does a global replacement of 'directory' for 'folder' and 'directories' for 'folders'?

Windows itself started using 'folder' eons ago, as far as I can remember, relegating 'directory' to the age of DOS.

Time for a broom through the code?

[Dalai]

A directory is always a folder, but a folder is not always a directory. Why is that? Well, you have some virtual folder like \\Desktop, \\Computer, \\Network or \\Control Panel that are not really there, it's just some virtual thing, not a real directory on disk somewhere like C:\Users\<user>\Desktop is.

Even Windows itself distinguishes between folder and directory. Add some entry to the context menu of directories in HKCR\Directory and right-click on any directory: The item will be there, but you won't see this entry in folders like drives/disks, control panel, computer and so on, because the latter are not directories but folders (and Windows has a separate key for this: HKCR\Folders).

What I'm trying to say: There's a reason why sometimes the term directory is used and sometimes the term folder, because they are two separate things, although very similar.

Furthermore, TC differentiates between folder and directory even more because not all operations are supported in virtual folders like \\Desktop and so on.

Regards
Dalai

[milo1012]

Windows itself started using 'folder' eons ago, as far as I can remember, relegating 'directory' to the age of DOS.

That depends on how you define "eon".
AFAIR it started with IE4 (and the active desktop garbage) in the Win9x days.

Anyway, I'll never get why people want to call such thing folder. A folder is something where I hold actual paper documents.
I'm glad that TC is still using the term directory, because that is the technical "more correct" term IMO.

Furthermore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_(computing)#Folder_metaphor

There is a difference between a directory, which is a file system concept, and the graphical user interface metaphor that is used to represent it (a folder). For example, Microsoft Windows uses the concept of special folders to help present the contents of the computer to the user in a fairly consistent way that frees the user from having to deal with absolute directory paths, which can vary between versions of Windows, and between individual installations.

...

If one is referring to a container of documents, the term folder is more appropriate. The term directory refers to the way a structured list of document files and folders is stored on the computer. The distinction can be due to the way a directory is accessed; on Unix systems, /usr/bin/ is usually referred to as a directory when viewed in a command line console, but if accessed through a graphical file manager, users may sometimes call it a folder.

TC is a directory based file manager, so it should name file system directories as "directories" and not as something "metaphoric".

[Lefteous]

I'm glad that TC is still using the term directory

TC uses both terms in a really inconsistent way. It would be great if it would use only one of them or if there is really a difference use the right term at the right location.

[milo1012]

TC uses both terms in a really inconsistent way. It would be great if it would use only one of them or if there is really a difference use the right term at the right location.

Well, maybe we should point out the most important places where those terms are used in the "wrong" way.

For a beginning:
As I see it, the TC help file sure is "inconsistent" for some pages, but e.g. the config dialog seems to use them quite appropriate, except maybe:

Configuration -> Log file -> Create/Delete folders
Configuration -> Ignore list -> Ignore (don't show) the following files and folders

Besides that,
Configuration -> Icons -> Show icons for special folders: Normal file system / Virtual folders (e.g. Network)
seems okay to me, as such places are "folders" in the Windows nomenclature.

TC's "Folder-Tabs" is a proper noun to name this very feature, so it's okay to call it like that.

Everything else in the config dialog seems to use the "directory" term. The same applies to the "Synchronize directories" function, the "Find files" dialog, the "Change attributes" dialog, the "Unpack" dialog, the FTP dialog and the (default) main menu.


The Pack dialog uses "Leave out base directory when packing folders", so it should probably be "Leave out base directory when packing dirs"
The function key buttons (bar) reads "New folder", while the help file describes it as "F7: Create directory".



Anyway, the suggestion was to use the "folder" term throughout TC, which I would find just inappropriate.

[Lefteous]

the suggestion was to use the "folder" term throughout TC, which I would find just inappropriate.

I'm not so sure about that. The definition you quoted may be correct but is this what users have in mind?

[milo1012]

2Lefteous
Well, it's up to Christian.

But AFAIR he stated more than once that TC is and will remain being "directory based", which means that we're dealing with raw file system dirs ("paths") most of the time, contrary to Windows explorer and some competing file managers, who will easily integrate virtual "library" views, like for the user "Documents" etc., as Dalai pointed out before. I mean just look how TC struggled for many years to finally provide a decent way to access this user documents folder. Now we have it in the drive selection box, which is probably not optimal either.
So as long as TC works on this low file system level most of the time, I'd prefer using low-level terms.

Sure we could start a poll about this, but I fear that most "average" users will probably not participate.

[Horst.Epp]

I would describe me as a more advanced user.
But I must say that for me there is no difference if folder or directory is the name for something I know and understand.
I think we should concentrate on more importand parts of TC.

[ghisler(Author)]

Folders is the more general term, including things like the network neighborhood, while directories usually refer to locations with a drive letter or a UNC path \\server\share.