p.s. – I put a shortcut icon on my shortcut bar to A43, but I changed the icon to look like windows explorer (at work)! This way, A43 is my file browser! Gotta love this K… sweetness…

1) a file manager doesn’t need to include a text editor. That is going well beyond its scope.

2) a file manager doesn’t need a “find file” feature. I know that statement sounds contridictory, but its true. Again, because it is beyond its scope. ‘Find Files’ should be a seperate application. The file manager itself should only have to dead with files in the current directory being viewed.

3) Open Dos Window. While this might be a handy thing to have, you shouldn’t need it. If the file manager was doing its job well, you wouldn’t need it. Honestly, I’d like to hear why this is included. If i wanted to do it from the commandline, i woulda opened a command line (and usually do) instead of a gui file manager.

4) Hex Editor : see text editor. There are fabulous hex editors out there already.

5) Built in zip sounds silly. Why not include a plugin interface so that the user can add which ever zip tools they would like? (I prefer 7zip on windows over any other i’ve seen. most people like winzip)

being able to sort on *foobar*.* really isn’t anything special, at least in the commandline. (BTW: *foobar*.* is the same thing as *foobar*). This is actually why i don’t even touch a file manager anymore. The GUI file managers are just so dang limiting, and cumbersome to work with.

Also. If you have all your music in one large directory, and want to orginize it into directories, you might wanna check out a thread on begroovy. I wrote a quick and dirty perl script to do just that (but for images) for someone. It could be easily modified to match music files, and be case insensitive and such.

Something like that is far more tedious than one should have to endure doing by hand.

There are also some much more advanced perl and python scripts that you can find on freshmeat, to do just this sort of thing. A couple (i forget which ones) will look at your id3 tags and go as far as creating album names as well inside artist directories.

Altp.

*foobar* is NOT the same as *foobar*.*

that was a sincerly dumb rewritting of a pattern match on my part. sorry about that
Altp.

Regarding your numbered list that would probably make a fine numbered list if I didn’t shut off HTML in my comments:
1. I don’t think including a text editor is too far out of whack. I agree that A43 may be overreaching in some aspects where it could be focusing more on being a makes-me-glad-I-didn’t-buy-a-Mac file manager, but I don’t think including a text-editor is overreaching. I jump in and out of text editors all of the time editing CSS, HTML, configuration files, etc. Having that integrated into the file manager is a nice perk.

2. I disagree. Aside from “locate” in Linux–which is arguably still “part” of the command line “file manager”–where do you ever see a separate find file application used in an OS? Windows has it built in. Mac does (I’m pretty sure), too. Besides, if I’m unsuccessful finding a file from a top-down approach via the file manager, I don’t want to fire up another application to do a bottom-up search.

3. I think there are just some command-line things that you can’t easily accomplish in the GUI. There are different strengths in each: GUIs are good with multimedia (thumbnails), command lines are good with manipulating text (grep). Putting an “Open Command Line Tool Here” in a GUI file manager acknowledges that fact. I appreciate Linux in that the open source community has effectively designed panache into both: Nautilus is a great file manager, and bash is one of the nicest command line shells I’ve used.

4. I think you’re right about the Hex Editor–I’ve never used one, so I don’t really require one to be in my file manager.

5. The nice thing about A43 is that it doesn’t override your context menu. When you right-click on files, you still have every option available to you as you would in Windows Explorer. That way, you can choose which compression utility you want. That said, I don’t think most people really care which compression software they use, just so long as it works. My wife’s laptop has StuffIt installed to deal with compression without WinZip adware. I’m inclined to uninstall StuffIt (which has its own subtle upgrade messages) and just use A43.

Filtering files is not something I’ve only wanted to do for MP3s, but other files as well. It’s nice to have a quick-to-access textbox to let me filter rather than tinker with a Perl script. Again, though, it kinda comes down to what tools you use. At work, I’ve written a productivity task-management database that lets me quickly filter out a particular task category with a few (/very/ few) keypresses. On the other hand, you program in Perl on a regular basis. To each his own, I suppose.

The thing is, the text editor included in a ‘file manager’ will be a stripped down text editor. It will never include the features that come with something like emacs or UltraEdit (probably the best windows text editor out there. If i used windows any more than I do, i would prolly buy it)

I would much rather be able to right click->edit with a text editor i define than one that is built in. I would much rather see the file manager consentrate on things like network protocols so that I could connect to my server witht he file manager and interact with the files as if they were local. Or even, just raw speed so that when I open a directory with thousands of files, they just all appear.

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where do you ever see a separate find file application used in an OS?
–

MacOS X .. its called Sherlock.

But, aside from that, for the sake of being able to easily replace your find application with a better tool. The find utility and the file manager should be designed to work together (both being able to call each other), but find shouldn’t be included directly with the file manager, as the same application.

–
GUIs are good with multimedia (thumbnails)
–

Actually, i generally turn thumb nails off. … Seriously, i don’t like them all that much.

–
I think you’re right about the Hex Editor
–

the logic behind it is the same as the text editor. Someone that doesn’t use a text editor often, but uses a hex editor frequently would see the logic in 1 and not in 4. Granted this person is rare, a bit odd.

–
And compare it to windows explorer for a minute… looks a lot better from that angle, doesn’t it?
–

To be honest. Windows explorer, that is just the file manager part that pops up when you hit windows_key+E, is one of the few things Microsoft has done right. BeOS Tracker was close, as was MacOS 9’s file manager, but neither were quite as good. I really don’t like OS X’s, i found it very cumbersome to use. I like being able to see the ‘details’ view all the time (name, file type, permissions, date modified, owner) and OS X’s always defaulted back to icons. Nautilus, though it has all the feature i want, is a burden even on my Dual 1.8Ghz Xeon with 1Gb of ram. Windows File manager ‘feels’ polished. Its generally very responsive (even on huge directories), and its one of the things that I have not had crash on me (or at least less than any other I’ve used, except maybe Norton Commander).

Gawd, I feel like a troll now Sorry about that. File managers are one of those topics that set me off though. I really don’t truly like any of them. THey all have too many flaws, and I always find myself back on a command line, no matter which OS it is.

My perfect filemanager would be something very simular to Norton commander, but updated to handle modern problems. I would probably like a couple lines at the bottom of the screen to see terminal output instead of jut one … but, iirc, you could turn off a panel to see output behind it. I know MC still exists, but, i’d rather not be in a terminal.

Altp.

I guess I have become a freak/fanatic. But fanatic only means I am a ‘fan’… so yes I am a fanatic (Christian Fanatic also…). Sorry for the rambling.

“Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?”
“Because we use vi son, they use emacs”

sean

A few things –

1) Find is integrated into finder in OS X. Sherlock is a weird internet pseudo browser thats a direct rip off of Watson by Karelia software. Advanced Find used to be in Sherlock, but was still in finder to a degree. Finding a file is a core function of just about every file manager on the planet – so deal with it.

2) Just like you don’t need an electric screwdriver EVERYTIME you need to unscrew something, you don’t need emacs or ultraedit for EVERY text file. There is an advantage in speed and process flow to being able to do the basics of text editing inline… tweaking a 3 line config file for example… or adding a quick journal entry to the top of a file… or whatever. Don’t say just because it isnt the best at its function out of every specialized app out there it shouldnt exist. Over specialization CAN happen.

3) Opening a dos window is VERY helpful. In fact, one of my favorite powertoys used to be “Command Line Here” – it’s because there are many things you can do in a gui just as easily/ more enjoyably / etc that you cant do on command line, but the inverse is true. A good example would be copying an arbirtary group of files out of a folder and leaving the remainder. At a command line you would have to type a bunch of various patterns and names to match them all… in the windows world you would have to type many commands, while on linux you could get all fancy with a nice forloop going… but its still a lot of typing, and a lot of room for error. In the gui, just ctrl-click the ones you want, drag, done. But then agian, you may want to run a perl script in a certain folder you find while navigating – open a dos window there, type the script name, boom… done. There are advantages to both.

I guess my point is realize that no interface is perfect for everything. There are two ways to approach the problem- 1 is with a tool box of small tools (think command lines + pipes) and the other is with a swiss army knife – then you throw in VERY specialized apps, which mostly act as “small tools” – but all of those have their own value. If both tools are sitting in front of you, it’s easier to use a real screwdriver than the crappy thing in the swiss army knife. But if you have to go GET the screwdriver from the garage or whatever, maybe the swiss army knife takes less extra effort. both are ok. Both have value. Flexibility is good. I am ranting for no discernable reason. I will stop.

2xExplorer http://netez.com/2xExplorer/ is another win32 file manager that looks efficient. I ran the executable directly from a zip file and it opened nice and quick (so nothing to install). I won’t be using it, b/c I want my terminal =P

Google Directory (or DMOZ) has a nice list of file managers: http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Software/File_Management/File_Managers/Windows/Orthodox/