RE: Viewer config (was: TODO list for the next version)

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hi, Nerijus!

> For example log files in /var/log are smth like messages.1, and they are
> certainly not man files. Another related and much bigger problem (as you
> can't use Shift-F3 here) - mc tries to show boot.log.1.gz as man file also.

I cannot think of any realistic solution for the later that wouldn't
confuse users and impact performance.

We probably don't want MC to display a dialog box on every F3 asking what
filters to apply to the file. Displaying all sensible permutations of the
filters in the popup menu would be ugly too. Running `file' on the
decompressed file relies on `file' being smart enough in every possible
situation.

Another possible solution would be to have rules specific to certain
directories (e.g. /var/log, $HOME/mail) without having to put MC-specific
config files into that directory. This would be appropriate for a very
advanced graphical file manager (like Nautilus), but it would look like an
overkill for MC and maybe even GMC.

Perhaps the best solution I can think of would be inegration of a
programming language (e.g. Python) into MC and interpreting mc.ext in that
language. But I doubt that anybody will ever do it.

For now, you can enter "gless /var/log/messages.1.gz" on the MC command
line. It's there for a reason.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin