Individual sorting methods for folders

[Troken]

Hello,

I usually want to sort folders differently, due to what I use them for. Therefore it would be nice to let XnView remember their sorting methods. You could let all folders have individual sorting, but one suggestion is following two ways of sorting:

1. General/global sorting, this is as it is now. All folders without specific sorting are sorted by this setting.
2. Individual/specific sorting, the folder have its own setting for sorting, which overrides method 1. XnView will remember this next time you browse this folder. This can of course be turned off, and then the folder will be sorted by method 1.

Too complex or a good idea? Any opinion on this?

[ckit]

Interesting idea to consider for XnView 2.0, not sure about adding it to the 1.9x branch.

[xnview]

Too complex or a good idea? Any opinion on this?

For me, too complex.

[Troken]

For me, too complex.

To accomplish or to grasp? Anyway, it's an idea. Maybe some day in the future

[foxyshadis]

The implementation is easy. Just make a new table, look up every time the folder changes whether it's in there and if so set it to its custom sort.

The UI would be the painful part. How do you know when someone means to change it for local or global? Imagine trying to add that distinction to the sort menu. How do you reset a single folder back to global? How do you reset all folders? How do you set a group of folders? Does it move with the folder, does it inherit from a parent? How do you communicate all this in a concise, intuitive, discoverable fashion in the GUI? (No fair arguing that xnview's UI is already creaky in places, so what's a bit more between friends.)

Windows explorer sidesteps the hard question entirely and gives you only reset, making all changes a custom folder add. There's no way to quickly make a hundred subfolders thumbnails with sort-by-date while leaving the rest details sort-by-type. It's almost as inflexible as Xnview's current way.

I'm not saying I wouldn't like the feature (actually, it's per-folder filter settings I'd like), but it'd take a real flash of insight to really do it right.

Maybe there'd be enough utility to make it an ini-only feature, list off certain folders that could be sticky, their sort orders being remembered and ignoring the global order. No one expects a good UI in an ini. =p

(But then people will want to be able to edit the ini definitions in the software ala about:config and blah blah...)

[Troken]

The implementation is easy. Just make a new table, look up every time the folder changes whether it's in there and if so set it to its custom sort.

The UI would be the painful part. How do ...

Thanks for raising all those questions, the issue grows more complicated when taking all of your points into consideration. And it must be considered of course. (I did not think of some batch-change of folder sorting.) Anyway, I imagined it fairly simple.

The idea came when working in Adobe InDesign (just read the following if youre really interested). InDesign provides a global view that comes in three different modes: Fast qty (low qty), medium qty and high qty. All images are shown according to the mode. But there is also the possibility of selecting individual images and overriding the view mode. For instance, working with a slow computer a good idea is to work with the mode fast quality. But for an individual image you work with, you can choose high quality while working at the specific page. All done with a right clicking. After working for a while you can then remove all individual view modes to fall back on global view mode.

So I thought something like that could be nice for sorting folders too.

[foxyshadis]

The answer to any of the questions can be "I don't care". The important part is just brainstorming and making an informed decision, then considering how to integrate the parts you do want without making long menus even longer. (Something I hope to have a solid suggestion on soon, unless things are already being reworked for 2.0.)

I guess Pierre doesn't want it for now, but vigorous discussion is still better than mentioning nothing. =D

[Clo]

—> Pierre

Hello !

For me, too complex.

• Indeed it is…
- As a first step, what about a limited improvement of the general sorting for the folders ?
- Currently, they are always sorded by name only, if I don't mistake.
- For example, in Total Commander we have an option for ages allowing to switch that sorting “Like the files”
(and back to “By names”, it's a bistable command which can be used with a single button in a bar).
- There is also a covering option (as an INI entry) for the folders having an extension
(when the current general sorting is “By extensions” and “Like the files” is set) to define the favourite behaviour in that case.

KR
Claude
Clo