The file browser

[Christopher]

On Sun, 2004-01-25 at 10:45, Jack Coates wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-01-25 at 02:04, Olivier Fourdan wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 19:19, Robert Serphillips wrote:
> > > Any chance you could add a tree view ala windows explorer or Nautilus? 
> > > Maybe it could be a configurable feature that can be disabled for people 
> > > who don't like that sort of thing.
> > 
> > Then why not using xffm ?
> > 
> > Cheers,
> 
> Reasons I don't use it, in no particular order (note that these are all
> issues that Rox filer doesn't have):

I feel like I should respond to some of these - in defense of Rox.  I
think a lot of your issues are due to your specific setup, and I'd hate
for someone to get the wrong impression of Rox.
> 
> Even in small view, it selects a font that is maybe five points bigger
> than any other font on my desktop. Since my eyesight isn't so good and I
> already use larger fonts than most people, we're talking like H2 in HTML
> :-)

I don't have this problem.  My rox fonts are the same size as other
fonts - an issue specific to your configuration?

> Half the screen is taken up with toolbars. Yes, they can be collapsed,
> but I don't have the patience to go through all those buttons and figure
> out which ones I'm going to be using regularly.

Are you configured to display both text and icons in the toolbar?  Just
showing icons reduces the size of the toolbars significantly.  A better
solution is to not use toolbars and put keyboard shortcuts on all the
menu actions you'd use - this makes rox very efficient to use.

> 
> It is bizarrely slow, compared to the rest of XFce4. While it is fast to
> start up, operations like a single-file drag-n-drop copy (860 bytes)
> take over a second to complete, most of which is popping up a file
> progress dialog. Doing it in Rox is as fast as doing in an xterm.
> 
If you keep the quiet box checked on the dialog - everything will happen
automatically that doesn't overwrite files.  On a small file transfer -
my dialog is barely visible long enough for me to notice it.


> It doesn't ask if I want to copy or move a file when I drag-n-drop. 
> 
Not sure why - mine does this fine.  Again, this is something specific
to your setup.

> I can't select multiple items by drawing a box around them.
> 
This too works fine for me.

> If I select two items, I have to keep the mouse button down while I
> decide where to drag them too; releasing the mouse button undoes the
> selection. Every other file manager I'm familiar with saves the
> selection state until you click on the background.
This is probably related to whatever is causing you not to be able to
draw a box around icons - I can make a box selection, release the mouse,
add to that selection with the Ctrl key - release the mouse - then drag
the selection to another window.

> No thumbnails for image files.
You just have to change a setting in the options dialog.


Once you're used to Rox - it really is a great tool.  Navigation is
really fast - single key to move you up, tab completion to move into the
next dir, single key to get a command line for the current dir.  I
encourage you to give it another try