feature request: xffm: multi-rename

[purslow at sympatico.ca]

040116 edscott wilson garcia wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-01-16 at 16:20, purslow at sympatico.ca wrote:
>> it is often very useful to be able to rename sets of files with 1 command.
>> there is a simple CLI utility 'rename' (Gentoo  sys-apps/util-linux ),
>> with syntax 'rename fromstring tostring filespec',
>> which will rename eg files 'test1.txt' 'test2.txt' 'test3.txt'
>> to 'test11.txt' 'test12.txt' 'test13.txt' via 'rename st st1 test*.txt'.
>> with KDE -- whose pgms i'm willing to use if necessary -- ,
>> there is Krusader as file-manager, which calls Krename to do this job:
>> it wb nice to be able to do this kind of job with Xffm,
>> but AFAIK at present there is no means of accomplishing it.
>> can i encourage someone to give it a try ?
>> if the answer is "Do it yourself!", what do i need to know beyone K&R 'C':
>> eg how do i start to learn re Gtk ?
> Due to limited time for all current developers,
> if you can come up with a patch that would be great.

i am always very grateful for & impressed by their work.

> To learn GTK, just follow the cut, paste and modify road.
> Take a place where you would want the new code to appear,
> say in the popup menu with a multiple selection. So use xffm
> to search all files in the xffm tree where the "Properties" string appears.
> Then start duplicating the code you find until you have two "properties"
> elements in the popup when selecting multiple elements in xffm.
> Then just modify the texts and callback functions
> so that it does what you want it to do.  Submit the patch
> & the devt team will probably clean it up a bit before commit to CVS.
> If you wonder what the gtk functions do,
> check the gtk API documentation which is very illustrative.

hmm, this is not very clear.  my picture of the utility is roughly:
the user selects multiple files in Xffm, then clicks on 'rename';
there appears a small window which says:
'rename selected files: replace 1st instance of [input box] with [input box]';
after the user fills in the boxes & clicks 'ok',
the simple 'rename' utility (above) is called invisibly
& the change of names takes place & appears in the Xffm listing.
it wb nice to have a 'test' or 'pretend' feature too, but that wb more work.

i'm willing to treat this as an exercise in learning more programming,
but it wb nice if you cb a bit clearer now you know what i have in mind.
if i do it, it won't be immediate, but wb on my list,
as i believe this is an important missing feature in Xffm.

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