Re: internal viewer/editor & virtual fs system questions

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hello!

> Is ist possible to add the internal editor syntax highlighting feature
> to the internal viewer ? So when I press F3 on a file, I get highlighted
> syntax.

It's quite hard.  The code for the viewer is completely separate from the
editor.  I think it's easier to make the editor work like viewer, but with
syntax highlighting, than to add syntax highlighting to the existing
viewer code.

On the other hand, the viewer has the hex mode (and even a primitive hex
editor!) and highlighting for groff output, something that the editor 
doesn't have.

I don't expect this to change unless somebody commits himself to do the
complete transition.  Simple fixes would only make things worse by
breaking some of the features in the viewer without providing a
replacement.

> The vfs question is about archiving, I guess that when I enter into an achive, 
> mc dearchives the file in a temporary place and only then allows me to see 
> the contents of the archive and to eventually copy the files from the tepm 
> location, but wouldn't it be better if mc just got the file list from the 
> archive and made a browsable tree of the archive, and only if i want to 
> extract something, it would extract the achive ? It would save time, because 
> the extraction on bigger files causes great delays. Or are the delays caused 
> by something else ?

I think what you are describing is how VFS is supposed to work.  There are
limitations, mostly for good reasons.  If you have a particular case when
you think mc is performing worse than it could, then describe that case,
describe what you do, what you get and what you expect to get.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin