[Thunar-dev] Invert selection action in Thunar

[Jelle de Jong]

Stefan Schwarzburg wrote:
> 
> 2007/10/31, Benedikt Meurer <benedikt.meurer at unix-ag.uni-siegen.de
> <mailto:benedikt.meurer at unix-ag.uni-siegen.de>>:
> 
>     Fernando Maróstica wrote:
>     > Hello thunar hackers!
> 
>     Hello Fernando,
> 
>     > I'm a new Thunar user.
>     > First of all I must say that Thunar is a great file manager !!
>     >
>     > The invert-selection is a feature request in thunar to have an
>     option to
>     > invert the current selection. That is, if we have 25 items in a
>     folder,
>     > and we select any 10 random items, on clicking Invert Selection, the
>     > other 15 items will be selected, and the original 10 items will be
>     > de-selected.
>     >
>     > Please, take a look at:
>     > http://foo-projects.org/pipermail/thunar-dev/2005-March/000493.html
>     >
>     > Use Case:
>     >
>     > When I'm backing up data from a certain directory, I select some files
>     > that would fit on a CD. After burning these files, I'd like to be able
>     > to select the remaining ones easily, so I can put them on another
>     disc.
>     > Right now I have to unselect the files, and then manually choose the
>     > ones I haven't burned carefully. Or, insert the burnt disc and compare
>     > visually myself to only choose the files which haven't been burnt.
>     This
>     > is tedious and not very confortable when you're doing the same
>     operation
>     > repeatedly or when the number of files is large.
>     >
>     > This email contain my first patch to contribute with Thunar File
>     Manager
>     > Revolution :-)
>     >
>     > I hope that is useful.
> 
>     Your patch leaks the memory returned from g_strdup_printf() when
>     constructing the tree path. BTW: You don't need to create a string for
>     the path first (see GtkTreePath documentation).
> 
>     Other than that, the patch looks good. Dunno how useful the "Invert
>     Selection" feature is; atleast I've never seen a feature request for
>     this besides the one from botsie. Maybe others can comment on this? 
> 
> 
> My Comment on this:
> Actually, I have never seen something like this in a filemanager.
> But I can imagine a lot of cases, where this could be really useful. So
> maybe if it is there, then I would use it often.
> But since I was never able to use this feature, I can not tell for sure.
>  
> 
My comments:

This feature is common on windows explorer (barf), I see a lot of users
that switched form MS to Linux ask for the invert feature.

I think its a good idea to implement it if it does not take up to much
resources.

Best regards,

jelle