[TC 11.50ß8] Font Wheel-roll in Lister Ignores Consequent Wordwrap

[Phred]

The new Ctrl+Wheel-roll in Lister is a hugely welcome addition to TC's immediate reader.

I find, however, that

1. The reference is made to 'Lister', and well may it be Lister, but I would have referred to it as 'the lister function', to distinguish it from TC's own 2007 Lister.exe program, a nice program in its own right.

2. The new Ctrl+Wheel-roll does indeed vary the size of the font within the window, but, unusually, the function doesn't honour the idea of word-wrap if it is so set. I find the size varying, therefore, only half a solution. The idea of enlarging, to me, is to be able to more easily read the contents of the file you're looking at, but if half the content disappears to one side, it is less than optimally useful.
- I recognise that some screen presentations enlarge according to where the mouse pointer is currently located, but that is not the case with Beta8.
- I can, for comparison, Ctrl+Wheel-roll this Firefox page in which I'm writing, and to a large extent, the zooming in will accommodate all elements I see. Everything changes.

3. Given its age and exposed lack of features, would it be possible to incorporate new 'lister function' features in a revamped Lister.exe, especially its admin-required necessity to configure it?

[petermad]

the function doesn't honour the idea of word-wrap if it is so set. I find the size varying

TC's Lister function is using word wrapping to a (user defined) number of characters per line (please see Lister Configuration dialog -> General tab -> Display width (characters per line), and that number does not change just because the font is up-scaled.

So you are basically asking for is that Listers word wrap function is changed to wrap to current window width.

I see no bug here, just a request for a new feature.

TC's own 2007 Lister.exe program

Lister.exe has usually been referred to as the Standalone Lister. The build in Lister has existed since the very first versions, so for me that is the LIster - not the lister.exe.

[ghisler(Author)]

1. I do not agree, I have always used the word "Lister" when referring to the internal viewer, see older history entries.

2. Word wrap isn't at the window border, but at a fixed user-defined number of characters. This is one of the compromises I had to make to allow viewing very large files very quickly.

3. I will consider it. Why not call Total Commander with /S=L parameter instead?

[Phred]

Yes, thank you PeterM and Author Ghisler.

1. Agreed, 'Lister' is indeed referred to throughout TC and its Help, and I grudgingly accept that it's probably too late to change it.
1.1. I note, parenthetically, that:
1.1.1.1. The button control at the bottom left of TC calls itself View, an argument for calling Lister 'Viewer' (notwithstanding the change from verb to noun).
1.1.1.2. But we mustn't quibble about nomenclature too much.

1.2. The prime referent I had in mind when I referred to Lister.exe was in fact list.exe, written by Tim Paterson while he was working at Seattle Computer Products, his creation evolving into MS-DOS, some of us might remember. A separate program, it was.

2. If the new Lister is to have real value, a disappearing half of a document is, to my mind, a bug.
2.1. However, by chance (influenced by pro-active facilitation offered by recent use of PDFGear (still free)) I found that Lister can be scrolled horizontally by holding down Shift while using the mouse-wheel. That feature doesn't appear to be in Help, yet.
2.2. Lister still has no proportional block in the scroll-bars (both), making it hard to determine by quick inspection where one's view is positioned.

3. Re my original proposition, I cite two instances for consideration - while acknowledging the internal character limit wrap-specification in Lister:
3.1. The current (late 2024) Notepad in Windows 10/11 that allows font enlargement while obeying a window-wrap constraint, and
3.2. Most serendipitously, TC's very own Help facility - in which a similar window-wrap constraint is honoured when Ctrl+Wheel-roll enlarges the font.
3.2.1. Benighted, I regret to have to say, though it is, TC's Help facility is a joy to behold in this regard.
3.2.1.1. (It never remembers the font size I choose, and the index column is forever unaffected, and tiny. Search and result-show is hit & miss. Why can't I search for %P? Help needs such a rework - but that's another topic.)
3.2.2. Help also reacts to wheel-button universal scroll lock.
3.2.3. Author Ghisler may not have rights to Help's code, but if he does, it may be useful for Lister.

4. I have in mind the temporary suspension of character limit wrapping when Ctrl+Wheel-rolling.

5. Author-G: I deduced your meaning from your /S=L comment and devised a Button-bar button containing:
"C:\Program Files\Total Commander Beta\TOTALCMD64.EXE"
and
/S=L %P%N
It worked well. I never knew.

[white]

1.1.1.1. The button control at the bottom left of TC calls itself View, an argument for calling Lister 'Viewer' (notwithstanding the change from verb to noun).

I discussed the use of the word Lister as well, in this thread.

5. Author-G: I deduced your meaning from your /S=L comment and devised a Button-bar button containing:
"C:\Program Files\Total Commander Beta\TOTALCMD64.EXE"
and
/S=L %P%N
It worked well. I never knew.

It was added 16 years ago in TC 7.50. Lister as a standalone program was abandoned after that. According to the changelog, the last version is based on Lister in TC 7.0:

12.06.07 Re-built based on Total Commander 7 final

The text on the Lister homepage is wrong:

32-bit Lister
English 32-bit version for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP: Same program as in version 6.5 of Total Commander.

16-bit Lister English
English 16-bit version: A lot smaller (from Wincmd 2.11), but without all the new features (HTML viewer, image viewer etc). Works on all Windows versions!

[Dalai]

1.1.1.1. The button control at the bottom left of TC calls itself View, an argument for calling Lister 'Viewer' (notwithstanding the change from verb to noun).

The buttons don't refer to what will appear on the screen, certainly not a specific program or window. Most of the buttons show what can be done with the file(s) selected: view, edit, copy and so on. Pressing F3 (or the F3 button in TC's lower left) doesn't mean that the file(s) is always opened in Lister. The user can define in TC's settings that F3 should open an external viewer or editor, or whatever program he feels like.

3.2. Most serendipitously, TC's very own Help facility - in which a similar window-wrap constraint is honoured when Ctrl+Wheel-roll enlarges the font.

Programs have no control over what the CHM help can do or cannot do when it comes to user input and rendering. Double-click any .chm file and you'll see that user interaction is always the same.

[petermad]

I found that Lister can be scrolled horizontally by holding down Shift while using the mouse-wheel. That feature doesn't appear to be in Help, yet.

I agree that the Shift+wheel functionality should be added to the Help

[Phred]

Thank you, gentlemen.
(I apologise for the raw military numbering; no leading spaces nor tabs.)

In the same way that Word used to be 'the PC', its almost sole use, superseded massively by internet browsing, the web interface is the "primum et necessarium" today.
I'd like to click on a couple of 'Likes' in this forum software, but "omnia in tempore".
I wait in hope.

[petermad]

Confirmed that this is added to the Help in TC 11.50rc1

You can scroll vertically using the mouse wheel alone, horizontally using Shift+mouse wheel, and page by page using Ctrl+Alt+mouse wheel.

[ghisler(Author)]

I'm moving this to "will not be changed" because I didn't implement any of the original suggestions.

Moderator message from: ghisler(Author) » 2024-12-04, 19:42 UTC

Moved to will not be changed

[Phred]

Addendum (straddling the notions of bug and request):

I'm finding that my continued use of 2007's Lister.exe is because of its suitablity for use with a double-click on, say, a text file. The file comes up in the preferred manner I've configured it, and, because it's purely a reader, I avoid inadvertent alteration of the document - and too quick a response to save at the prompt. It has a 'select' mode that lets me copy text, too.

If I interpret author Ghisler's reference to calling TC with /S=L correctly, that requires a button-bar button that will lie somewhere on one of many possible bars, depending upon where I put it at the time of creation.
Double-clicking is far easier, imo, and more attuned to process memory. And it obviates my travelling to such button or down to 'F3 View'.

Is there a more modern equivalent to 2007's Lister.exe reader?

[Contrary to rules, may I ask quickly if there's a published method of adding plugins/addons to betas installed in their own folders?]

[white]

If I interpret author Ghisler's reference to calling TC with /S=L correctly, that requires a button-bar button that will lie somewhere on one of many possible bars, depending upon where I put it at the time of creation.
Double-clicking is far easier, imo, and more attuned to process memory. And it obviates my travelling to such button or down to 'F3 View'.

No, it does not require a button. You can simply replace Lister.exe with TOTALCMD.EXE /S=L wherever you use it.
If you simply want to easier access to the viewer by double clicking, you can use this method:

New functions and fixes in Total Commander 11.00:
...
- Internal commands can now be used in internal associations, .e.g. ***cm_List %1

[Contrary to rules, may I ask quickly if there's a published method of adding plugins/addons to betas installed in their own folders?]

Double-click the archive of the plugin from within the beta.

[Phred]

[TC11.50RC2]

1.
FWIW, and acknowledging that this is the "Will not be changed..' subsection, my invocations of 'F3 View' and [TC.exe /S=L %P%N] in a button display these contrasting views:
https://ibb.co/wBxQ1q3

It may be a function of DPI settings (currently 175 here, but the same behaviour also obtains on other PCs).
It would be satisfying if they were the same.

2.

New functions and fixes in Total Commander 11.00:
...
- Internal commands can now be used in internal associations, .e.g. ***cm_List %1

I've puzzled over this, white, but I can't see how to use it. "***cm_List %1"
If you're passing, could you give more detail please?

[white]

New functions and fixes in Total Commander 11.00:
...
- Internal commands can now be used in internal associations, .e.g. ***cm_List %1

I've puzzled over this, white, but I can't see how to use it. "***cm_List %1"
If you're passing, could you give more detail please?

Well, you talked about double-clicking in order to view a file. You can make an internal association for that. Choose menu option Files/Internal Associations, click the Add button, enter * and click OK, as Open command type in: ***cm_List %1, click OK 2 times. After that, all files will be opened with Lister when you double-click them, except for programs and archives.

[Phred]

[TC11.50RC2]

Very interesting; thanks white.
I used *.txt rather than * and it works as intended. (Internal) Lister displays my text files upon double-click - with its new Ctrl+mousewheel to change font size, though not in the way the new Notepad does it. (Just saying..)

I'll think about the significance of the *** and see what I can deduce.
And I'll ponder where the normal selection of a program for Open substituted by an internal TC command appears in Help.
In the meantime, many thanks.