Filer_Action enhancement!

I like the last version, other than the empty space to the left of the counts, which I think is wasted.

I’m not sure this would look right either, but what about putting it all on a line in a more sentence like format?

(Using an icon for each bit, obviously, rather than faffing around building the sentence for each update).

Crumbs! :)

[Steve Revill] I have to say I don’t like that. I think the screenshot from this post was just about there.

I agree, I think despite what the Style Guide says (and I do have a copy somewhere, I should probably read it), it does look better without the slabbed in fields.

[Dave Higton] The progress bar could be implemented as a full height background to the filename well, in a pale colour

We tried that already, or pretty much. I think consensus was that a separate bar looked better.

[Martin Bazley] Why all the blank space on the left? Couldn’t you use that to extend the number fields?

I agree it looks a bit odd but there’s room for over 12 digits there, I don’t think the fields need to be bigger.

“Locked files not deleted” belongs in the error area, not the title bar.

Possibly, but it’s never been reported as an error previously. I’m not saying that’s right, just that moving the status field into the title bar is going to require some more work because it’ll require rewriting a lot of the messages file and possibly some different descisions about when and where to show stuff.

[WP Blatchley] Shouldn’t the Territory module be used to decide what separator is used for large numbers?

Currently FA uses the C function localeconv() – does this do the same thing? I’ve never used the Territory module so I’m not sure how it’s supposed to work.

I assume that the Territory module is used to format the numbers, so they come out with the correct seperator for your configured territory.

• UK
• France (apparently deprived of a thousands separator (non-monetary))
• Some of the Territory Numbers seem to be missing their respective files.

OK, so territories are implemented as modules – I assume this is what the “UK” module in the default ROM is? So if I build the, say, “Germany” module, I shoudl be able to test this…

[a few minutes later]

It seems to work. I loaded the Germany module, did *territory germany, and the commas in Filer Action turned to full stops.

However when I tried to go back to territory UK, I got a data abort inside MessageTrans! Ho hum :)

Steve: in many countries the use of a . instead of a , is used for denoting thousands.

Sure, I’m well aware of that. I’m writing this from the UK so clearly I’m commenting on what I see here. I assumed that the character was localised using the Territory manager. My comment clearly wasn’t advocating that a comma is the answer to all my problems; I was simply stating that making the numbers readable rather than “10328234903428409” was a good thing. Anyway, as has already been observed, this is way off-topic.

Rik: keep up the good work – design by committee is never an easy thing but I’m liking what I see and it feels like it’s close to being ready for CVS. There will always be some people that don’t like a particular design (perhaps even me) – you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

assumed that the character was localised using the Territory manager

Should the files be amended in accordance with the ISO? There may be a few other inconsistencies too, e.g. no negative sign for Canadian currency. I’m happy to begin reviewing all of this if that’d be helpful (in a new thread), although I’m not sure on some of the lower parameters.

I realise that you can’t please everyone all of the time, or even some of the time :) I’ve addressed some of the issues raised, and here’s a new version for people to try out: http://www.btinternet.com/~rik.griffin/Test_FilerAct.zip

Summary of changes:

• Back to non slabbed fields for the numeric displays.
• Paths are shown in “Faster” mode.
• More efficient update of path, should be a bit faster.
• Changed some of the messages shown in the title bar to remove redundancy.
• Moved “x locked files not deleted” into the path display from the title bar.
• Progress bar is blue :)

close to being ready for CVS

Would it be a good idea for any source changes which have significant corresponding forum discussions to include the forum thread URL somewhere in the docs/changelog? That way, trying to summarise/justify decisions in the docs may not be totally necessary. It may also lead to some interesting thread resurrection in a few years, if/when current changes are revisited.

That’s great, thanks :-)

One small addition – please give Filer Action windows a close icon. It has always bugged me that they can’t be closed in the normal way. Plus you can’t iconise them without a close icon!

BTW, I hope that all this extra progress code does not get executed if Verbose is turned off, so it isn’t wasting time calculating things that are not going to be used.

I spend far too much time at work with Windows “Preparing to delete/copy/move” rather than it just getting on with it!

One small addition – please give Filer Action windows a close icon.

I think there’d be potential for confusion there. Would the close icon act in the same way as “Abort” or would users expect it merely to hide the window so the operation continues in the background?

BTW, I hope that all this extra progress code does not get executed if Verbose is turned off, so it isn’t wasting time calculating things that are not going to be used.

The progress calculation code is pretty minimal and has a negligible effect on overall speed. Other changes I’ve made mean the new FA is faster than the old one anyway, even in non-verbose mode.

Besides, remember that you can turn “verbose” on during a FA operation.

One small addition – please give Filer Action windows a close icon

Would the close icon act in the same way as “Abort” or would users expect it merely to hide the window so the operation continues in the background?

Could it have an iconise button?

Could it have an iconise button?

Not without a close button it can’t – they share the same window flag.

If you just want to hide the window, there’s always the back button…

I just tried it on my Iyonix, which has the “clean” theme.

It would look far better with the wells (and separate well for the progress bar as Colin suggested).

I just tried it on my Iyonix, which has the “clean” theme.

Screenshots or it never happened ;)

Netsurf for comparison.

The theme is broken, though. It has a white background which means the white highlight edge of any 3D field is lost. It looks (IMHO) awful in the NetSurf example, for example with the “missing edge” around the bottom and right borders of the fields, along with their arbitrarily coloured filled in backgrounds. It’s all very RISC OS 2…

I really don’t think developers should try to make some window work in an arbitrary theme. They should work in the vanilla default desktop. Anything the user does after that is the user’s (or theme designer’s) lookout.

Rik – I think this is very nice. The current version is a huge step forward from the one in ROM, and you’ve done a heroic job marshalling all the different comments. I like it.

> I really don’t think developers should try to make some window work in an arbitrary theme. They should work in the vanilla default desktop. Anything the user does after that is the user’s (or theme designer’s) lookout.

But it appears to be the case that if the style guide is followed, the theme looks fine. (The NS window pasted into webpage looks poor out of context, but looks fine on the desktop.)

Surely, if style guide followed, then any problems are down to the theme, if it isn’t then problems could be down to either. (Analogous to, rendering problems with valid HTML being down to the browser.)

I’m torn WRT Jess’ comments … on one hand, I think we should try to follow the style guide (or at least A style) as far as possible.

On the other hand, I think the design for the FA window we’ve come up with looks best in the current incarnation, without too many slabbed in fields …

On the other other (gripping) hand – these templates are loaded every time FA is started and there’s nothing to stop anyone changing <FilerAction$Path> and using their own templates.

Could what goes in the ROM be strict style guide? (i.e. Colin’s comments on slabbed design.)

Then provide the other templates you have designed in a app dir to be loaded on start-up, if desired. (Or even a configure plug-in.)

Could what goes in the ROM be strict style guide? (i.e. Colin’s comments on slabbed design.)

I’d say no. For two reasons:

1. most people (I think) don’t like the way that looks
2. the existing FilerAction templates don’t have slabbed icons everywhere (probably because of reason 1)

I think we’ve arrived at a design that most people like and if we’re all happy that it’s working functionally, then it’s probably time to get it into cvs and build a ROM with this in.

the existing FilerAction templates don’t have slabbed icons everywhere (probably because of reason 1)

Isn’t that a tiny bit like saying we won’t fix this bug, because everyone is used to it?

Shouldn’t the style guide be the target? (And if it is wrong, then it should be amended, then followed).

On the default RISC OS styling, I like both the style guide option and the other option equally, however all the similar windows (e.g. netfetch, netsurf) match the style guide version (and also look nice with the theme I use).

Has everyone judged how they like it from the image on the webpage, or in context amongst similar windows on their desktop?

Aesthetic issues aside, I’m going to try and get the code ready for commit to the CVS. So if anyone notices any bugs, misfeatures, quirks etc can you please let me know.

I’m not going to consider adding new features at this stage.