Total Commander

Thanks everyone for the feedback and suggestions. Hacker's code worked for me.

Are you considering implementing this feature, Christian? I needed this at least twice today. Going back to the original file and then opening it with F4 is very annoying.

Support+++++++

I tried, but the problem is the handover of a temporarily extracted or downloaded file from Lister to editor. Currently it's not possible to keep track of both at the same time (file both opened in lister and editor) and delete it only when both are closed.

I wouldn't mind at all if after pressing F4 the Viewer closes and the closed file opens in the editor. Knowing the path to the file should be enough for that.

Christian have you considered at least minimal functionality as I wrote in my last post?

Almost every day I need to open a text file from the View window for editing. It would help me a lot if such text files could be opened for editing (as well as after pressing F4). The View window can be closed before opening for editing, so that changes don't have to be synchronized to it.

2jbcb
There is a simple Autohotkey script available which does this
with every Editor and any Lister plugin.
What should Christian make better ?
There are also text Lister plugins which can be switched from read-only to write mode while viewing,
CudaLister and AkelPad for example.

Horst.Epp wrote: ↑2023-11-23, 14:53 UTC 2jbcb
There is a simple Autohotkey script available which does this
with every Editor and any Lister plugin.
What should Christian make better ?
There are also text Lister plugins which can be switched from read-only to write mode while viewing,
CudaLister and AkelPad for example.

I am a user who is missing features in the app. And I'm not alone. I don't want to install more and more scripts in the application and repeat it on all the computers I use.

Many of the features that are directly built into Total Commander could be replaced with scripts or other workarounds. But it's not the best solution. And it's not a reason to stop developing TC.

I have tried several alternative viewers and editors, but they are not good. They don't look nice, behave non-standard, have lots of bugs and unnecessary features. I like TC Viewer and Notepad.

I think the proposed feature is very easy to implement and will help users.

Horst.Epp wrote: ↑2023-11-23, 14:53 UTC What should Christian make better ?

Making it built-in functionality for all the people unable or not willing to use solutions involving third party software.

white wrote: ↑2023-11-23, 16:55 UTC

Horst.Epp wrote: ↑2023-11-23, 14:53 UTC What should Christian make better ?

Making it built-in functionality for all the people unable or not willing to use solutions involving third party software.

Exactly!

Mr. Ghisler, please add this feature for text files.

Hi guys, Mr Ghisler

I would like also to support the idea for the possibility to open an editor from the Lister. Actually I would hope for the registered TC editor.
If opening temporary files (like from compressed files) is a challenge, then IMO it would be just OK for the F4 command to come up with a warning pop-up cancelling the action.
As Mr Ghisler already identified the challenge

ghisler(Author) wrote: ↑2023-05-03, 19:05 UTC the problem is the handover of a temporarily extracted or downloaded file from Lister to editor

Meaning there is a way to identify that condition,
On the other side @Hacker has some sort of a solution, which means he must be facing the same challenge.
Most likely @Hacker did not resolve the challenge, but is also not giving up on the functionality.

Conclusion:
The feature need is recognized, despite the shortcomings, which IMO constitutes a very small percentage of use cases.


Another approach for a HALF solution would be to have a command in Lister to copy the path name of the opened file.
I believe this also could be a useful feature on its own.

Fla$her wrote: ↑2022-05-24, 18:31 UTC Why doesn't anyone mention AppLoader?

2Fla$her
Please share if you are using it.
There are numerous reports of failures with it.
viewtopic.php?p=413070&hilit=apploader&sid=14ca3c950961be78aa784862c26301ab#p413070
viewtopic.php?p=412746&hilit=apploader&sid=14ca3c950961be78aa784862c26301ab#p412746

so does this plug-in work with Win10 21H2?

Unfortunately I encountered a few more problems I couldn't solve:
1. When the file is shown with a Lister plugin, it may be locking the file, so the editor can't open it.
2. The user may have already modified (and not saved) the file in a lister plugin when pressing F4.
3. Closing Lister when I press F4 was very annoying when I wanted to press F3 and accidentally pressed F4 instead.
4. The whole problem with temporarily downloaded or extracted files is even worse than I thought: In some cases, e.g. when using a multiple document editor which was already open, Windows would not return a window handle to watch to see when the editor has closed. In such a case, TC shows a confirmation dialog where the user has to confirm when he closed the editor. This dialog would be shown on top of Total Commander, but TC may be busy with a foreground operation or show other dialogs, or even be minimized then.

Christian,
1. and 2. - I think making it work for pure Lister view (without plugins) would be enough.
3. - well, that's a mistake of the user, just like pressing Del instead of Ins, or F8 instead of F7.

Roman

If I disable F4 for temporary files, I wouldn't need to close Lister when the users presses F4.
But I would probably have to switch from plugin view to text view, or alternatively disable F4 while in plugin view?