Total Commander

While looking to see if my wish was posted I ran across this thread:

http://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=22724

In it, Christian posted the following:

ghisler(Author) wrote:This is actually not a bug, but a feature change in TC 7.5. Explanation:
In Total Commander 7.0x, each part of a multi-volume RAR could be unpacked separately by entering that part and copying the files from it. TC 7.5 now supports the unpacking of entire multi-volume RAR archives.

The problem is that many users select ALL parts and then choose Files - Unpack. If TC would try to unpack the file for each part, it would try to unpack the same files again and again. Therefore TC 7.5 now unpacks the archive only when you try to unpack the .rar file, not the other parts.

I can see why Christian changed the behavior from 7.0x, but my suggestion is to take this idea farther. My idea is that if the user double-clicks or hits Alt-F9 on either all the parts of an archive or any part other than the first part TC should behave as though the user performed the action on the first part of the archive.

Example #1: If the user double-clicks on foo.part25.rar then TC should act as though the user double-clicked on foo.part01.rar and display all the files in the archive.

Example #2: If the user hits Alt-F9 on bar.r33 then TC should act as though the usre hit Alt-F9 on bar.rar and unarchive the files accordingly.

In short, trying to open or extract any multi-part archive by highlighting anything other than the first file in the set TC will internally translate that to perform the action on the first file automatically.

I think if this were implemented it would stop the same files from being archived over and over again like Christian originally wanted, address the wish of the person who started the thread referenced above, and would make things easier for the users when they are trying to work with a multi-part archive in a directory with lots of files and the file panel is sorted by a column other than Name.

If this breaks anyone's way of doing things it could be made an .ini optinon, but I think it'd really increase the ease of use of working with multi-part archives.

I think that if user enters foo.part25.rar TC should show only contents of this part and to allow unpack only files from this part.
But if user uses Alt+F9 onto any part of archive, TC should unpack entire archive.

2MVV
Agree.

MVV wrote:I think that if user enters foo.part25.rar TC should show only contents of this part and to allow unpack only files from this part.
But if user uses Alt+F9 onto any part of archive, TC should unpack entire archive.

That should probably be a configuration choice in the .ini as I can see the merits to both ways.

I think it would be better not to introduce an additional option in wincmd.ini, but split the reaction between enter(doubleclick) and ctrl+down. In my opinion it is more flexible. I expect that ctrl+down would open only current part of archive and the enter - the whole archive(started from part1). The same for unpacking: alt+f9 - whole archive, ctrl+down and then f5 - one part.

Postkutscher wrote:I think it would be better not to introduce an additional option in wincmd.ini, but split the reaction between enter(doubleclick) and ctrl+down. In my opinion it is more flexible. I expect that ctrl+down would open only current part of archive and the enter - the whole archive(started from part1). The same for unpacking: alt+f9 - whole archive, ctrl+down and then f5 - one part.

It may be impossible if Enter and Ctrl+PgDn processed as one command <enter_archive>