Page Up & Page Down item selection position

Thunar 4.18.4

PU = Page Up
PD = Page Down

I have a list of some things I noticed about the using PU & PD keys, not sure if all related to the same issue. If they are not I can separate them into different issues if someone can confirm. Also keep in mind that my Debian based distro does not offer the newest version so this may have already been corrected.

Overall, if someone could just test out there PU & PD keys when in folders that contain a good amount of items enough to be able to make use of the PU & PD keys (for example your "bin" folder), and just verify if these keys function as expected. I do not know if there one specific standard for how these keys work.

All of these tests were done with Thunar in single pane mode & maximized (unless otherwise mentioned)

Here are some things I have noticed.....

ISSUE 1

When in say the "bin" folder, put your cursor highlight on the top file, if you hit PD notice what file it moves the highlight to. Then hit PU to bring cursor back to the top and hit PD again, depending on the speed in which you do this the highlighted item sometimes is visible at the top of your screen after hitting PD and sometimes it is not visible, you can just see the highlight color rectangle but not the items name itself. If you hit PD PU PD as fast as you can the highlight will no longer be visible it will be above the column header.

ISSUE 2

Similar to above actions mentioned above sometimes the highlight will be on the next items name (from the one you took notice of) This one occurs more if you use your HOME key. If you hit PD HOME PD Expected behavior for 1 & 2 above is that it would always be the same item highlighted and that it would be at the top when PD is applied.

ISSUE 3

A while back another user & I confirmed this issue and I took some notes about this to report, but now seems to be a little different then my notes. In the past I think the when you used PU or PD it would position the highlight cursor more to the center of the file pane. But anyways this issue overall is mainly about what item Thunar decides to use when PU or PD is hit. When you hit PD for example it appears to bring the cursor down and selects an item about 3 from the bottom instead of bringing cursor down to the last item visible in the current file pane. I am kind of expecting it to pick the last one visbible.

ISSUE 4

Again not sure if there is a default/expected behavior but another thing I noticed is that in other file managers if at the top of the list of items in file pane the top item is highlighted, often when you hit that first PD key, it seems to usually just bring the highlight down to the bottom file without advancing to the next "page". You then have to hit PD again and then it goes page down to the next "page". Thunar automatically just goes to the next page when PD is applied.

ISSUE 5

This one kind of ties into ISSUE 4 For this one make Thunar a floating window and make the height about half height of your screen. Can be a little tricky to setup just right, but if the height of window is just right I think where the item name at the bottom of the file pane is slightly cut off. Then if you use PD or PU it will replicated the expected behavior mentioned in ISSUE 4. When you hit PU or PD it will move the cursor to the top or bottom of file pane WITHOUT advancing to the previous / next page.

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Again if someone can help first narrow down what of these issues do still occur in the newest release of Thunar that would be helpful. Second would be if anyone can help narrow down the items that do still exist, which ones are related and which ones I should separate into different bug/issue reports to keep things clean/easier for developers to work on.

Thank You to anyone who reads this.

changed the description

Thanks for reporting! I tested the following in list-view … no idea if the same issue exists for icon-view (did you test as well that?).

ISSUE 1

Can reproduce on master and 4.18.x, seems to be about scrolling to the highlighted item after selection, which fails in some cases.

ISSUE 2

Can reproduce on master and 4.18.x. It seems like the decision which icon to select in influenced by e.g. the scroll position.

ISSUE 3

Actually the same issue then (2). Imo the item to select should be the first item which is not fully visible any more ()

ISSUE 4

Again not sure if there is a default/expected behavior but another thing I noticed is that in other file managers if at the top of the list of items in file pane the top item is highlighted, often when you hit that first PD key, it seems to usually just bring the highlight down to the bottom file

Just tried some other file managers: There seems to be no clear default/expected behavior on that. Like said above, I would prefer to always go to the next page of files (That is what I would expect when I press a button which is named "page up/down")

ISSUE 5

A duplicate of (2) and (4) … no matter which size the window is, imo the item to select should follow the rules stated above.

added 5. Keyboard Shortcuts 5. Scrolling labels

changed the description

@alexxcons Thank you for testing these out. I was using “List View” as well. I do not personally use “Icon View” for everyday use, I have seen other people that do but I have no idea how anyone could do this :) I am glad you bought up “Icon View” though because I tried after you mentioned it and it provides some information for this PU/PD topic as well as another issue I was planning on mentioning in the future.

Overall I agree with all the opinions that you shared on expected behavior. Ultimately it is your decision what behavior to use, I am just mentioning these observations to bring your attention to some of these issues to hopefully help you narrow down your decision. Since you are going to be putting in the time to work on these, I am just trying to do anything I can to limit the amount of time you would have to spend on finding these issues regarding PU/PD.

Okay lot of little information bits to share so will be tricky, I will try my best to make this as least confusing as possible.

ISSUE 3 / ISSUE 4
I have gotten used to that first PD bringing the cursor to the bottom of the “first page” because I have experienced this more often then not when trying out other FMs but I agree with your opinion, that it would seem like it should just advance to the first item not visible as being at the top of the “second page”. Brings up a question though, why do some/other FM developers decide to do this? Has to be some reason why that decision is made, if anyone has any ideas let me know, I am curious.

(That is what I would expect when I press a button which is named “page up/down”)

True but in the past I recall many times being at work, hitting the “Home” key over & over only to be disappointed to realize that I was still at work, so sometimes keys do not do what they are labeled to do :) and don't even get me started about my expectation with the “Insert” key....

I had mentioned in the beginning of ISSUE 3 about remembering this differently, I figured out why. It has to do with how many items are in your folder, this occurs when there is not enough files on the “second page” to require another PD for a “third page” For example say your maximum file pane height allows for 20 files
“page one” = 20 files
“page two” = 10 files
If cursor is on the top file of page one an you hit PD in this scenario, Thunar will end up showing the cursor more in the middle of your screen. If you hit PD again then the cursor advances to the bottom item (end) because there is no “pages" after. Again I do not know what the expected behavior should be, but other FMs I have tested do something different, and it could be because of / one of the reasons for that first PD situation that does not advance to the next page mentioned above. In other FMs that I have tested, because they use that first PD that does not go to the next page, when you hit PD again the cursor advances to that last item at the bottom.
So would just have to make decision, just hard to say right now because not sure if any of the other decisions / issue fixes will affect this.

Also as mentioned above with “Icon View” If you try PU/PD with “Icon View” it appears to have its own approach to PU/PD. It does not bring the item that is not visible to the top, the highlight cursor remains at the bottom of the screen. It also appears to use similar behavior, where the PD for example, brings the highlight cursor to the bottom, not advancing to the next page. Could be happening similar to why this occurs with ISSUE 5, because hard to get icons / names to fit perfectly in file pane.
Kind of hard to describe, have to try it to get an idea of its behavior. Again I do not use “Icon View” so I am not sure what is considered expected behavior, but it does have a different approach to PU/PD compared to “Detail View”.

ISSUE 5
I agreed should still perform the same regardless, just mentioned this issue to point out that it does not in this situation.

ISSUE 1-5
This kind of touches upon all the issues mentioned. In regards to if the decision that the PU/PD goes to the next item that is not visible, is added. No idea of how this would be handled programming wise but, keep in mind what to do if the file pane is at a height in which the bottom files name is not fully visible (gets chopped off by bottom of file pane / status bar). Would have to think how this would be handled. Would it be considered a visible item if only 50% (tops of letters) are visible?

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Again sorry, lot of information but hopefully some of it will be helpful.
Anyways thank you again for trying these out and for all the work you put into Thunar itself.

Thank you for the additional details!

I am not even sure if these selection issues can be solved within thunar. For icon view (and compact view) I recently touched the related code for other reasons .. it's located in exo. For list-view, I am not sure if we can customize the related code in Xfce at all, since the ExoTreeView we are using is itself not implementing the logic, but uses a GtkTreeView internally, which seems to implement that logic.

--> Moving this issue to Exo

Since you are going to be putting in the time to work on these,

I would rate this issue as a rather minor issue, so don't expect much from my side here, I already have a long list with other things I want to do. However, merge requests are always welcome!

closed

moved to exo#113 (closed)

added 3. Moved label