On Tuesday, April 26, 2011 06:05:58 AM Duncan did opine:
> gene heskett posted on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:15:18 -0400 as excerpted:
> > Sorry, konqueror's claim to be a file manager has always struck me as
> > bogus. Compared to the mc of 6 to 10 years ago, its worthless.
>
> For the GUI inclined, it was/is decent.
I did get it set for 2 pane operation once, but I'll be damned if I was
able to make it copy a file from the left pane to the right. Whats a file
manager that can't do that worth? Zip.
> > OTOH,
> > features are disappearing from mc at a rate that will have it back to
> > failing kindergarten questions in another 2 or 3 years. Yes, I miss
> > the glory days when mc could literally do it all.
>
> ??
>
> I'm a /regular/ mc user, and while I've seen some changes, the only
> /feature/ I know that has disappeared, last I checked, and I expect that
> was by accident, was sparse-file copying. I used to use it all the time
> to do my backups, using F5/copy, a dir on one filesystem to a dir on
> another, keeping all perms and everything, until one time after an
> update, the destination had less freespace after the copy than the
> origin. I was worried it was filesystem damage on the origin until I
> traced down a couple of the differences -- sparse files on the original
> were suddenly taking their full space, they were no-longer sparse, on
> the copy! mc had NEVER done that before!
Humm, I'll have to see about that. With large drives I had not noticed the
diff. I did find one gotcha recently, if copying a whole directory, the
auto-appended / on the targets filename will copy the dir to a
subdir/subdir, so you have to hand edit the target string & get rid of he
last /.
> So I switched to using cp -ax, which I could have been using all along
> but previously had no need to as mc had always "just done the right
> thing".
>
> But I expect that "feature" loss was simply due to the new maintainer
> taking over, after the code had been effectively abandoned for some
> time, and not knowing what that whole block of extra code that
> apparently did nothing was actually for.
> I'd say it's likely been fixed by now, but I've not tried it recently,
> so I can't say for sure. I should have checked for a bug and filed one
> if necesssary, but I didn't.
> Otherwise, I've seen feature gains, some of the more obscure hotkeys
> changing, etc, but no losses. Things like the user menu might have
> changed/lost-features, but I wouldn't know as I've long had my own user
> menu configured.
>
> Oh, and I've had some problems with hotkeys not working in konsole, but
> that's because konsole's keybindings have undergone some major changes
> recently. I admit I don't like them as stuff that used to "just work"
> doesn't now, but I suspect that'll get worked out in the end, as mc is
> still detecting konsole and expecting the old keybindings, some of which
> have changed. Once they get in sync once again, I expect it'll all
> work. (Someone who knew what they were doing could probably make it
> work now, but I tried and ended up only making things worse, so... the
> level of know what you're doing required must be above /my/ level of
> know what you're doing. <shrug>)
>
> So I really am wondering what features you've seen disappear in mc.
The keybindings are major to me. It hasn't show me a gfx image in a year,
which was handier than a button on the outhouse door when verifying that I
was about to attach an image to an email, forcing me to use gimp for that.
I haven't tried recently, does its ftp client still work from its own
command line? New brooms tend to nuke that which they no not about.
> >> Typing a path, for instance /usr/share, gives you the option to open
> >> it in kde's configured default file manager (dolphin by default, but
> >> it can be konqueror or gwenview or...).
> >
> > Another one I haven't figured out. It needs a reason to exist, and I
> > haven't detected one yet. Ditto for Krusader, but it at least
> > defaults to a 2 panel mode. Nice eye Kandy, but needs some real
> > ability.
>
> Dolphin... I've not really figured out either, except that it seems to
> have been drastically simplified from konqueror, for the "computers for
> dummies" crowd.
+10,000. It, and its ilk, should be terminated forthwith. Useless drive &
menu space wasters.
> I guess they figure that the computer literate folks
> should have no problem switching the preference to a different file
> manager if desired, so it makes a reasonable default. I won't argue
> with that, AS LONG AS THEY DON'T KILL THE OPTION TO SWITCH TO SOMETHING
> ELSE!!! But that would be way more gnome-like than kde-like, and I
> don't really see it happening.
>
> Krusader... I've never really used, because it has always been an extra
> install, but mc has always been great for sysadmin hat filemanagement
> and konqueror or whatever has been fine for the trivial stuff, so I
> simply never was motivated to do the extra install to try it.
>
> But if they do it right, it could be really nice. Back before the turn
> of the century when I was still on MS WormOS, I found a really neat
> two-panel style file manager available as freeware (not freedomware,
> unfortunately, and IDR the name), that had the idea of putting the
> copy/move/etc buttons in the center column, a really nice GUI
> arrangement for functions that transfer files from one panel to the
> other. Plus, the big "new" thing in filemanagers at the time was the
> ability to work with compressed archives as "virtual" filesystems, much
> as mc does, and it handled that rather better than some of the others I
> tried. And IIRC it was somewhat customizable as well tho not to the
> extent of mc's user menus. So I was quite happy with it. If krusader
> is equally as useful, I may well wonder how I ever did without it after
> a period, much as I do mc.
Krusader, the last time I looked, was "all hat & no cattle".
> But certainly when I'm wearing my sysadmin hat, mc's definitely my file
> manager of choice too. And when I'm wearing my user hat, gwenview seems
> to be surprisingly effective -- and would be more so if I could
> configure it to show all files, not just images/video. But other than
> music files too, that's generally what I'm managing when I have my user
> hat on anyway, and gwenview as an image manager is quite effective
> indeed.
I'll have to remember that, it at least has a std open file menu.
Digikam is another that has been forced on me by a ptp camera. Its picture
database ability, and its ability to find and reuse one you finally
convinced it to generate, sucks dead toads through soda straws. Why not a
std menu that simply lets you navigate to where you want to store the pix?
No way in hell can you find that. So does its ability to automatically
detect and use a camera that Nikon probably sold 20 million of, the CoolPix
L100. It does show up in the import menu, but to make it work, you have to
choose the generic usb ptp also offered. Little things like that tend to
get under my skin.
I could go on, but the list is probably tiring of my rants by now.
Thanks Duncan.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
<http://tinyurl.com/ddg5bz>
<http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html>
She been married so many times she got rice marks all over her face.
-- Tom Waits
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