Custom columns in wfx plugins

[Sir_SiLvA]

2Sir_SiLvA
Are you really serious about that? Some examples:
Registry: Type, Value and permissions.
TaskManager: I don't know the plugin but the windows task manager has a lot of columns.
Uninstall: Comments
Recycle bin: Original location. date deleted
Eventlist and services: Many fields - just look at your windows event viewer or services management program. Think about a full text search in your event log... possibilities would be infinity (and no longer limited to plain files)

Yes Im dead serious.
Uninstall - Comments ? where Do you see any comments?
Taskamanger: http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/procfs.html
Your other exampels like Registry should be implemented in that fs-plugin directly imhuo
otherwise it gets to much "frickelei" as the King would say

[Lefteous]

2Sir_SiLvA

Uninstall - Comments ? where Do you see any comments?

I'm sorry comments are shown for example when you open the windows control panel in detailed view - not the uninstall control panel.

For the uninstaller there could be even more other information of interest. Just open one of the subkeys of the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
Some of them contain a lot of useful information. For example you could find "dead" uninstallers this way.

Your other exampels like Registry should be implemented in that fs-plugin directly imhuo

I never made assumptions on where such a plugin interface enhancement could be implemented - and I won't discuss them here.

[Sir_SiLvA]

For the uninstaller there could be even more other information of interest. Just open one of the subkeys of the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
Some of them contain a lot of useful information. For example you could find "dead" uninstallers this way.

[OT]Did you ever tried the Uninstall-Plugin ? The Info you speak about you find after pressing F3 [/OT]

Before make CustumColums for FS-Plugins avail it would be more important to save Colums per Folder

[Lefteous]

2Sir_SiLvA

Before make CustumColums for FS-Plugins avail it would be more important to save Colums per Folder Smile

Difficult to decide which enhancement is required more - I would say both are required.

[petergus]

I support this "custom columns for FS plugins" thing too.

I really miss it when I'm looking for some value in registry and I have too
open 200+ regvalues because I can't see the values in TC without open them.

In cases like this I have to run regedit instead.


Peter, #84319

[CoMiKe]

The best way to implement it would be to add some extra funcions to the WFX SDK, so plugin authors can decide what columns are necessary for a certain plugin.

And then the plugin should show in the options dialog what columns the user wants to show in TC.

[CoMiKe]

Sorry for bumping this thread again, but custom columns in filesystem plugins is the feature I'm expecting the most for v7.0 and it seems a bit forgotten.

This would integrate TC even more with our system, and we could use some plugins in a more comfortable way (for registry editing, service monitoring, cd-burning, device management, etc). I would prefer to do this tasks inside TC as it's faster browsing that virtual folders than Explorer, and it's far more extendible.

This topic has also been discussed on this thread:
http://ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?p=63604#63604

A lot of plugins could be enhanced by using custom columns. Some examples are kindly discussed in this post by Lefteous:
http://ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?p=61764#61764

Best regards.
------------------
CoMiKe

[Alextp]

This connection of FSPlugins+Custom Columnes could be greatest enhance for Total Commander currently possible.

How do you imagine that? Should TC download all the files displayed in file system plugins, just to extract custom columns from them?

I imagine this feature like this:
if plugin is designed for TC>V7.xx, it gives to TC data not in form TWin32FindData, but in form TTCFindData, where TTCFindData has additional fields for custom columns. Plugin can then fill that fields by its own data, in FsFindFirst/FindNext functions. Of course, sctucture TTCFindData must be backward-compatible with TWin32FindData, so older plugins may work too. You may put add. fields to the end of FindData, or to use dwReserved0/1 fields for that.
What do you think?

PS. FAR Manager already has this feature in panel plugins.

[ghisler(Author)]

Technically it would be no problem to add, but from the user interface it's a nightmare. Some of the questions that arise are:
- how should the user configure these columns?
- what should be shown by default?
- how should the column widths be handled?
- what should happen when the user switches in/out of the plugin, e.g. in full view, or a different custom view?

These are just the problems I see before trying to add it. Any suggestions?

[Lefteous]

2ghisler(Author)

how should the user configure these columns?

In the FS plugin configuration there should be a button "Confîgure custom columns" for each FS plugin providing the columns. The configuration itself should be identical to the normal custom column configuration
(this configuration should be discussed somewhere else)

what should be shown by default?

The "Long" view would be the easiest but possibly not the best choice.
Alternativelly you could implement a function which enables a FS plugin to provide a default view.
Technical implementation idea:
declaration: int FSContentGetDefaultView (int index);
definiton: plugin returns the index of the next field to include. -1 to indicate the last column has been reached.
TC call: Send column index to plugin. Plugin returns field index and quit with -1.

how should the column widths be handled?

The same way they should be handled for columns for the local filesystem
(this configuration should be discussed somewhere else)

what should happen when the user switches in/out of the plugin, e.g. in full view, or a different custom view?

The same what happens when you try to change to custom column view nr. 5762
Only column configs which belong to the current filesystem should be provided.
When the filesystem is changed the last used column view is invoked.

[Alextp]

2ghisler(Author)

Some of the questions that arise are:
- how should the user configure these columns?
- what should be shown by default?
- how should the column widths be handled?
- what should happen when the user switches in/out of the plugin, e.g. in full view, or a different custom view?

1) I think in the same way as for wdx columns: there must be dialog for configuring columns, but only columns for current FS plugin can be added. If plugin supports columns "Filename" and "Description", then "+" button must show these 2 columns.
2) By default - what is returned by plugin. E.g. plugin can return "Filename/Description" columns, so these columns must be shown.
3) See 1) - it's configured in dialog
4) Custom columns must be saved for each plugin separately - if you switch to another plugin, or to another view, then another columns will be shown.
And columns must be saved for every plugin: e.g. (wincmd.ini)

[FSColumns]
Plugin.wfx=[Filename=Width1] [Description=Width2]
IECache.wfx=[Filename=W1] [URL=W2] [Expires=W3]

[Flint]

Let me try too.
Well, how I see the possible interface solution for the subj.

a) The Custom Columns settings dialog will have some additional feature to show, if the columns set is general or WFX-plugin-specific. Possible solution (fake screenshot - 14 kb). Description: the list-box contains all the WFX-plugins installed, plus the first item General (or <General> or something else) which means usual custom columns for usual files/folders. When you select an item from this list-box, the custom columns list changes to one that belongs to the plugin selected (there should be a special list for every FS-plugin).

b) When you select the General item, the Edit Custom Columns dialog remains absolutely the same to its current appearance and behaviour. When you select one of the plugins, the dialog looks the same, but pressing the [+] button will show the menu consisting from only 2 items: standard tc item and the currently selected WFX-plugin's name. See the fake screenshot No.2 (24 kb). The plugin is responsible for the list of the possible columns.
But it should be possible to create custom columns even if the plugin does not support its own custom columns! For example, I may wish to see for one plugin the file size (in addition to name+ext), and for some other - file date. Both size and date can be taken from the internal tc "plugin", so there is no need in supporting any additional column by the FS-plugin itself in this case.

c) And the last: how to select the custom columns in TC itself. The Shift+F1 menu remains the same, but when the FS-plugin is active, this menu shows only the column sets for this plugin only. See the fake screenshot No.3 (8 kb) for example. Of course, when I select Configure Custom Columns from this menu, I get the same Custom Columns dialog (as on the first screenshot) with the current plugin selected.

If someone has anything to ask/add/correct, I'm ready to discuss.


Added:

2ghisler(Author)
There are some questions remain about the default behaviours and about the behaviour when switching to other plugins/modes. I'll try to cover them too.

Well, the most convenient solution could be the following: TC remembers the last column set selected for this partucular plugin (independently for all FS-plugins) and restores it when user opens the plugin again. For the first time (when no mode was saved yet) the plugin behaves as it currently do: it uses the currently selected mode (Brief/Full/...). If the mode is unsupported by the plugin, it may switch to Full Mode.

When switching from one plugin to another (or to a usual non-plugin folder), the custom columns mode may change to Full either (because this mode is common for all FS-plugins, as well as Brief and some others), so it will work properly in any case. Of course, if the plugin is currently in some compatible mode (like Brief) the mode should not change.

[ghisler(Author)]

Thanks for all your ideas! I will check how difficult this will to add, and then either add it still to v7.0 or postpone to v7.50.

[CoMiKe]

Thanks for all your ideas! I will check how difficult this will to add, and then either add it still to v7.0 or postpone to v7.50.

Thanks to you for taking this feature request into account. I can only hope it to be done for next version.

Just in the case it's implemented, I only see one more thing to improve in FS plugins. It's about the fact that some plugins add special files to the filesystem to perform some specific tasks (like "Burn" in CD burning plugin, "Add value" in registry editor, etc).

It would be useful if a special dynamic toolbar was added and every plugin was able to add some buttons to that toolbar for that specific task, so FS plugin writers might be able to remove that special files.

But let's forget about it until FS custom columns are implemented.

[MiDoS]

May be it offtopic, but I has one idea.

Impement new function in wdx plugin to order files by custom column. Now it's sort bu alphabet, slow and sometime wrong. New function will take as parametrs two files, and return 1, -1 or 0.