[enh, usability] Remember view settings per directory
Submitted by Foxy
Assigned to Reuben Green @reubengreen73
Description
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.6 (Ubuntu-feisty) Build Identifier:
Currently it is not possible to make a particular directory to remember view settings. For example if my default view settings are View as compact list but I want some directories to display files as icons I cannot do it. Could be quite useful for dirs with images and so on.
Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
- Open Thunar
- Enter any directory and change view
- Leave the directory and see that all other directories have the new view settings
Actual Results:
All other directories have the new view settings
Expected Results:
There should be an option to have settings are changed only for this particular directory while other dirs retain the default settings set in the Preferences.
Designs
Activity
In version 1.6.3 it's still impossible to remember the view per folder. It would be very useful to have an option like this, because it's exhausting to set the view in every folder that you open. This is specially true when you work with different type of files in separate tabs or windows.
I suppose that it could be implemented in 2 ways: either saving a hidden file in every directory that is configured (as Dolphin does) or saving the parameters in a configuration container (a hierarchy of directories, a small database...) The former is easier to implement I guess.
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In my opinion, it would be necessary that this feature were implemented this way:
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An option in the "Edit > Preferences..." menu to enable or disable the feature.
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An option in the "Edit" menu that states something like "Apply current view to sub-directory".
Although the most needed is the first point, I believe that having the second one would be useful for that times when one is working with a tree of directories and needs the same view in all them, in order to prevent having to visit the sub-directories one by one.
I'm willing to offer $100 in BountySource providing that it's implemented as described here. If someone wants to collaborate with me, comment. Here it's the link: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/3547154-option-remember-view-settings-for-this-folder .
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Let's group some other bugs under this one:
- https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4167 In the details view, the column widths and sorting method would be preserved for each directory
- https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5767 Make save/restore of view settings optional
So, what needs to be stored per-directory
- View mode (icons, compact, list)
- Zoom level
- Columns width
- Sorting order
- Hidden file display status (suggested in Bug 5767)
Different directories may serve different purposes. For example, for a directory containing source code, you'll likely want to use List view with a low zoom. For a directory containing images, you'll want Icons view with high zoom. Sorting order should be remembered for use cases like André's.
I'd not like this feature to litter my directories with config files; per-settings directory should ideally be stored in a config file or in xfconf.
When no view options are set for the current folder, use the previous folder's settings by default.
Confirmed on 1.6.3-2 on Debian
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This is a pretty basic issue and the request has been open for almost ten years. Is the assignee still around? If not, can it be reassigned?
There is also a cash bounty for this feature, see https://www.bountysource.com/issues/3547154-enh-usability-remember-view-settings-per-directory
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:|
Any very rough estimate on how long that port may take or where it's at? Maybe this could be included as part of the port. It's very basic functionality.
Anyway, if it can't be included as part of the port, I will put a reminder in my calendar to bump this feature request even if it's a couple years out. This is very annoying behavior.
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@andreldmsaid:I can't speak for the devs, but the port is still going to take a little while, being pretty optimist we might have an 4.14 alpha by the end of the year. Here is how it's currently (a bit outdated): https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.14/roadmap
Unfortunately, thunar, xfdesktop and xfwm are the ones lagging behind. It was settled that this was to be a 1:1 port, no big new feature, but if someone spare some time I think the patch will be more than welcomed. I can't promise anything, currently I'm porting xfce4-screenshooter and I'm not really knowledgeable of thunar's code.
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@andreldmclosed a related bug:*** Bug 14547 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
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Having a set of Thunar CLI options to select view style, order, etc... (overriding xfconf settings for the CLI launched instance) : would allow to play with launchers, and even to write external scripts that read a "per folder desktop file" containing view style directives ....
just my 2 cents ;) JP
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Just to provide an example of user experience caused by lack of this feature:
I use XFCE on a HTPC box. Whenever I want to watch my tv-series, I go to the network drive (1 click), right-click (2) to choose 'sort by date modified' (3), then right-click again(4) to choose 'sort descending' (5), enter the right folder (6), then right-click again (7) to 'sort by name' (8) to find the episode I want.
That's 8 mouse clicks where it should be 2 if sorting order for the top folder was remembered.
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@alexxconsclosed a related bug:*** Bug 7107 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***