Re: ALT ('-') and ALT('+')

["Vlad Romanenko" <vladromanenko ukr net>]

> Hello!
> 
> > Is it reasonable to make ALT('=') do Select All as well? I use it all
> > the time and that triple bucky gets a bit... bothersome.
> 
> The code for the file selection keys is messy and needs a serious cleanup.  
> Adding new key combination to compensate for brokeness of the existing
> code is hardly reasonable.  Additional complexity will be an additional
> obstacle for those who will clean up this code.  People learn keys, and
> then you can reassign those keys to something better.
> 
> There are several things you can do to make it more convenient for now.  
> You can use a terminal that has separate escape sequences for the keypad.  
> You can use only_leading_plus_minus.  You can even use "Learn keys" to
> assign your favorite combinations.
> 
> Have you tried "Learn keys" for that?  If yes, why didn't you like this
> approach?  I think that the "Learn keys" dialog has two problems - one is
> that users cannot find it when they need it.  The other is that they don't
> realize that it can help them.
> 
> The answer (hard, but still not ideal) would be to implement remappable
> keys and a to write a much more complex dialog to assign keys to actions
> (as opposed to matching physical keystrokes with escape sequences).  This
> would also mean stripping hardcoded keys from the menus, breaking all
> translations.  It was discussed many times, but nothing was done.
> 
> I think it can be said about the current state of the project that most of
> the simple patches have been applied.  The remaining stuff is mostly hard
> and involves redesign.  The unfortunate thing is that very few people
> actually want to do the hard stuff.  Most contibutors simply try to
> "overstretch" old bad design.  Remember e.g. chaining video players with
> the "||" operator, which was an obvious (and wrong) extension of the same
> idea for the Word doc viewers.
> 
> > I see that those functions avoid the directories. It's a paltry matter
> > to comment out the lines in cmd.c that check for dirs, but there must be
> > a reason someone did that to begin with.
> 
> At least two reasons.
> 
> One is that the new dialogs are harder to code than to use input_dialog()  
> or other ready dialog.  Just a little details - when XView was supported,
> all the dialog had to be created backwards, i.e. starting with the widgets
> that are last in the Tab order.  Even the title of the dialog had to be
> drawn manually until recently.  Most importantly - the dialog API is
> undocumented.
> 
> The other reason is that the selection for directories is in fact
> supported.  Just add slash at the end of the pattern.  Usability of this
> feature was obviously neglected, so that not only most users are unaware
> of it, but even the developers trying to improve this code!
> 
> I cannot apply your patch for two reasons:
> 
> 1) It makes it harder to select only files if I want to.
> 
> 2) It replaces one random choice with another one instead of giving the
> user the choice (and giving the choice to the user means a checkbox with
> an obvious name, not an extra paragraph in the manual).
> 
> > that way you can select all, then reverse the selection to get the
> > directories all selected? Two keystrokes.
> 
> Don't you realize that this inconsistency (invert affects directories, 
> select doesn't) is just another bug?  It's not right, it's just tolerated 
> by users, unlike files on ftp beginning with "2000 " :-)
> 
> > Usually the subdirs are a minor component of a directory structure, and
> > it's the files you want to work on, usually.
> 
> Let the user decide.  I'll appreciate if you check popular non-free file
> managers (Far, Norton Commander, Windows Commander) and make the behaviour
> consistent with at least with one of them if possible.  At least some
> users won't have to learn news keys when they start using mc.
> 
> > Also, the unselect-all SHOULD do directories, shouldn't it.  That's what
> > it's for, to unselect everything, isn't it?  Right now it won't touch
> > selected directories.  Isn't that wrong? If it's not wrong, could
> > someone please explain why?
> 
> Maybe because something (just like like you) didn't like writing new 
> dialogs?
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Pavel Roskin