commander: small improvement on listing and panel width #1394

icy · 2024-12-14T09:06:13Z

Motivation

When working with different directories that have some common files that have long full path names, it's hard to find the right file from the list. This is because the panel's width is 500 and the full path may not be shown completely within the panel as below

<-------- visible to  user --------> <----- invisible to users ------------------->

/-----------------------------------\
| /foo/bar/directory/with/very/long-|/path/name1/sample.txt
| Files -> Recent Files -> /foo/bar/|directory/with/very/long-/path1/name/sample.txt
| /foo/bar/directory/with/very/long-|/path/name2/sample.txt
| Files -> Recent Files -> /foo/bar/|directory/with/very/long-/path2/name/sample.txt
\-----------------------------------/

In this illustration, when looking up sample.txt, the user has no idea about the directory information (both path/name1 and path/name2 do matching)

The patches

The panel's width is one half of the width of the Geany window when this amount is greater than or equals to 250
Otherwise the panel's width defaults to the width of the Geany window
For labels, don't display full names; only display the parent directory's basename and the file name

The previous illustration now becomes

/-----------------------------------\
| name1/sample.txt                  |
| Files -> Recent Files -> /foo/bar/|directory/with/very/long-/path/name1/sample.txt
| name2/sample.txt                  |
| Files -> Recent Files -> /foo/bar/|directory/with/very/long-/path/name2/sample.txt
\-----------------------------------/

and this helps user to quickly find the right files.

Of course this doesn't solve all edge cases when there are a few more levels of duplication in full path names.

eht16 · 2025-01-04T14:44:14Z

Could you try to remove the unnecessary white space changes? This would make the diff easier to read and less noisy (I'm aware I can disable showing whitespace changes but they are still there).

Or we manage to convince @b4n to accept stripping trailing whitespace :).

icy · 2025-01-04T16:36:06Z

Hi @eht16 ,

Thanks for your suggestion. I will update the patch with spaces removed.

icy · 2025-01-05T11:38:00Z

Hi @eht16 ,

Thanks for your suggestion. I will update the patch with spaces removed.

I am using Geany to edit the file, and one of the plugin/functions of the editor has edited the spaces without my intention. I have tried to squash the commits and give another try today.

Update: I found the cause of my problem: geany/geany#3942 :D

When working with different directories that have some common files that have long full path names, it's hard to find the right file from the list. This is because the panel's width is 500 and the full path may not be shown completely within the panel as below ``` <-------- visible to user --------> <----- invisible to users -------------------> /-----------------------------------\ | /foo/bar/directory/with/very/long-|/path/name1/sample.txt | Files -> Recent Files -> /foo/bar/|directory/with/very/long-/path1/name/sample.txt | /foo/bar/directory/with/very/long-|/path/name2/sample.txt | Files -> Recent Files -> /foo/bar/|directory/with/very/long-/path2/name/sample.txt \-----------------------------------/ ``` In this illustration, when looking up `sample.txt`, the user has no idea about the directory information (both `path/name1` and `path/name2` do matching) - [ ] The panel's width is one half of the width of the Geany window when this amount is greater than or equals to 250 - [ ] Otherwise the panel's width defaults to the width of the Geany window - [ ] For labels, don't display full names; only display the parent directory's basename and the file name The previous illustration now becomes ``` /-----------------------------------\ | name1/sample.txt | | Files -> Recent Files -> /foo/bar/|directory/with/very/long-/path/name1/sample.txt | name2/sample.txt | | Files -> Recent Files -> /foo/bar/|directory/with/very/long-/path/name2/sample.txt \-----------------------------------/ ``` and this helps user to quickly find the right files. Of course this doesn't solve all edge cases when there are a few more levels of duplication in full path names.

icy · 2025-01-05T14:28:25Z

Could you try to remove the unnecessary white space changes? This would make the diff easier to read and less noisy (I'm aware I can disable showing whitespace changes but they are still there).

Or we manage to convince @b4n to accept stripping trailing whitespace :).

Hi @eht16,

I've updated my pull request and I think it's easier to review now. Please have a look when you've time.

Thank you very much.

b4n

I'm not against a way to better discriminate between similar-looking paths, but I think it needs more work not to be as specific to your use case where the parent's directory name is enough.

Also, please split changes into individual commits (e.g. the change to window size seem unrelated), and make sure the rationale behind each change is clear -- for example, the one behind the window size isn't clear to me.

b4n · 2025-02-04T23:05:14Z

commander/src/commander-plugin.c

-        gchar *label = g_markup_printf_escaped ("<big>%s</big>", item_label);
+        gchar *basename = g_path_get_basename (item_label);
+        gchar *dirname = g_path_get_dirname (item_label);
+        gchar *dirname_basename = g_path_get_basename(dirname);
+        gchar *label;
+
+        if (g_strcmp0(".", dirname_basename)  == 0) {
+          label = g_markup_printf_escaped ("<big>%s</big>", basename);
+        } else {
+          label = g_markup_printf_escaped ("<big>%s/%s</big>", dirname_basename, basename);
+        }


This seems overly fragile to me, as menu item labels can contain pretty much anything, including /s.

Take for example Edit → Insert Date → yyyy/mm/dd: with this change, it appears as mm/dd.

Yes, that may be a problem, and in that case, it's also possible to see all details in the smaller part of the menu item ( Edit → Insert Date → yyyy/mm/dd).

b4n · 2025-02-04T23:15:14Z

commander/src/commander-plugin.c

+    gchar *dirname = g_path_get_dirname (DOC_FILENAME (documents[i]));
+    gchar *dirname_basename = g_path_get_basename (dirname);
+    gchar *label = g_markup_printf_escaped ("<big>%s/%s</big>\n"
                                            "<small><i>%s</i></small>",
+                                            dirname_basename,


Here it's not as problematic as those are paths. However, the dirname is not necessarily helping much as it might very well still be the same (e.g. if there are foo/src/main.c and bar/src/main.c, this change won't help).

If this is really an issue you encounter, I suggest investigating a more clever solution, possibly verifying there are effectively duplicates, and then compute the difference between the paths in order to show parts that are actually relevant. IIRC there's something like that in Geany's got to popup you might get inspiration from.

Once that's dealt with I wonder what the best visual layout would be… maybe <big>$basename</big> ($path_diff)\n$path? Not tested though, but I think preserving focus on the filename, or actually what's really relevant in it, is important. So maybe even highlight the different parts?

I agree that your suggestion would be better and would address all cases well.

I was actually thinking if I could do some computing for all items before getting the best display option. However, I think that would require more resources, and I don't think it's ~~not~~ worth trading. I was really getting some hard time using our plugin, and the best idea I've been able to share, is this (wip) pull request.

I will spend a little more time on this, at least for my own usage. If you think there should be more efficient way to address the problem, I can help to open an issue and hopefully someone from the community can help.

Thank you a lot for your time.

b4n · 2025-02-04T23:20:45Z

commander/src/commander-plugin.c

+  if (window_width >= 500) {
+    window_width = window_width / 2;
+  }


Is 500 really too big? Otherwise if the goal is to make it bigger, then the threshold should be whatever makes it larger than 500 (math suggests it'd be 1000).

Also note that this is not dynamic during a Geany session, it's only the default size when opening the panel for the first time, if you change the Geany window size later it won't affect this. This is not necessarily an issue though.

Is 500 really too big? Otherwise if the goal is to make it bigger, then the threshold should be whatever makes it larger than 500 (math suggests it'd be 1000).

When the main window has some moderate size , I want(ed) the commander's panel has relatively smaller size. When the main window is too small (< 500), I want to see the commander of the same size (otherwise it's too small to show any thing if I get it right.)

I admit my calculation is bad. It's better that I used some min() function instead.

Also note that this is not dynamic during a Geany session, it's only the default size when opening the panel for the first time, if you change the Geany window size later it won't affect this. This is not necessarily an issue though

I've also noticed that, thanks for your confirmation.

b4n · 2025-02-04T23:23:01Z

commander/src/commander-plugin.c

@@ -804,4 +828,4 @@ void
 plugin_help (void)
 {
  utils_open_browser (DOCDIR "/" PLUGIN "/README");
-}
+}


Please bring the trailing newline back 🙂

Sure I will do that. This would be a bug somewhere in (my) Geany system.

OT: I was into this issue #1394 (comment), now I have two options at project level (Ensure new line at file end [checked] + Strip trailing spaces and tabs [unchecked]). Somehow only one of them works as expected :(

icy mentioned this pull request Dec 14, 2024

Icy commander [don't merge, this is helpful to see what changes I have made] icy/geany-plugins#1

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icy force-pushed the icy-commander branch from f4548ec to 92bd4eb Compare January 5, 2025 11:34

icy force-pushed the icy-commander branch from 92bd4eb to cc04625 Compare January 5, 2025 12:42

b4n requested changes Feb 4, 2025

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b4n added enhancement plugin/commander labels Feb 4, 2025

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commander: small improvement on listing and panel width #1394

commander: small improvement on listing and panel width #1394

icy commented Dec 14, 2024 •

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commander: small improvement on listing and panel width #1394

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commander: small improvement on listing and panel width #1394

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icy commented Dec 14, 2024 • edited Loading

Motivation

The patches

eht16 commented Jan 4, 2025

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icy commented Jan 5, 2025 • edited Loading

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icy commented Dec 14, 2024 •

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