Slightly strange behaviour in Dolphin

[pallaswept]

@skyfishgoo

either 1) or 2):

1. focus is returned to the parent folder (PWD or the folder selected prior to Ctrl+Shift+N)

• this would mean that a newly created folder does not automatically receive focus and the user would need to navigate to that folder to give it focus for whatever comes next.

2. focus is put upon the newly created folder, even if it is not visible (because it is either not expanded in the details view, or simply not shown as in the other views).

• which causes a dilemma because a folder not shown in the GUI view now has the focus and there is no way to indicate that in the GUI (sounds like bad UI).

3. Focus is put on the newly created folder, which is made visible?

Why do we only have 2 options?

[pallaswept]

Expected:
$ tree test
test
└─ 1
   └─ 2
      └─ 3
         └─ 4
            └─ 5
               └─ 6

Seems perfectly reasonable
edit: not my favourite or anything, I’m just sayin.

[Lenry]

I think what summarizes really well, is that every time we suggest that this whole nested thing should be eradicated, it gets ignored, and every suggestion is about how to fix a problem that shouldn’t even exist

[ggggeri91]

Reasonable for which test scenario? Please also write down your input sequence.

[ben2talk]

@pallaswept

Why do we only have 2 options?

3. Ignore the selected folder unless a context click on that folder is used; simply create the folder in the address at the top.

[pallaswept]

I tried to point out subtly that you were missing something, and I tried to be jovial, but I really don’t think you quite understand what you’re asking for, and perhaps its time someone explained this.

@Lenry

every time we suggest that this whole nested thing should be eradicated, it gets ignored

It’s not that you’re ignored, it’s given due consideration. You’ve had replies. It’s just not a great idea. I know it’s not perfect but hear me out. It does make sense the way it works now. Not to say it works great, yet, but if you spend a moment you can understand ‘why’ it makes sense to be like how it is for now, at least for now.

In most file managers, but let’s say windows explorer because that’s the other one anyone is thinking of, if you create a subfolder in your current location, you can’t fold that subfolder out and see its contents, you have to change location to it, like by doubleclicking it, to see inside it.

So when you right-click a folder in the right pane, you don’t get the 'New…'submenu, because that makes no sense, you can’t do anything in there, or even see it, until you change your location to there. But if you select the current location, you get the ‘New…’ submenu because you can see the contents of that folder.

But Dolphin is fancy, because it can fold out that subfolder and see its contents. That’s super useful all the time for lots of reasons. Now we have the ability to work in a TREE not just in a single folder FROM a tree. I have 8 dolphin tabs open now and I’m doing it in 4 of them. So, now we can have a ‘Create New…’ menu everywhere, because everywhere could be visible. Nice!

It’s not just a matter of removing nested folder creation. This is a side-effect of a power-user feature. Nested folder creation isn’t a feature alone, it’s folder creation, with nested folders. We can view the nested folders. And we like it, it is amazing. Windows explorer doesn’t have it and most file managers don’t have it and they need to gitgud But they don’t have to solve this problem we are talking about here.

We do, and for a lot of us, “just delete one of dolphin’s best features because I didn’t wanna have a nice talk about how else to fix this one tiny problem” is not a solution we like. Nobody is ignoring you. We just want to think of something better. How can we keep the viewing nested folders in a fancy tree view, which obviously rocks in 10000 ways, and keep our super consistent “Create New” menu behaviour across it all, but also, not wind up with weird unexpected behaviour?

Rather than the nuclear response, maybe it would be cool to have a think about the features and the experience of using them and try to come up with an alternative that you’d like that wouldn’t be breaking other stuff and would be easy for a dev to write.
Or just let the devs know you had a problem, make your suggestion (job done!) and chill and let them do their thing? They’re gonna sort this out. Relax

[pallaswept]

I replied to the context of my reply.
If you click where it shows your name in the right, you will see the post I replied to

[meven]

You can do that already:

Slightly strange behaviour in Dolphin

In the dialog you enter ”1cat/2dog/3pig” and you will get what you want. (mkdir -p built-in) Or you would need to select the 2dog folder to create a sub-folder for it. It seems nobody knew that was possible

Here 1/2/3/4/5/6

That’s what happens with such long thread…

[skyfishgoo]

@Lenry

Dolphine needs to stop caring about selections when creating folders.

but it already does

if you use the context menu, it very much cares about what is selected… so that much is already baked into the code.

[skyfishgoo]

how do you make the new folder visible in icon or details view?

the only way to do that is to change the PWD and now you have made a dolphin jump thru hoops you many not have intended when you simply wanted to make a new folder.

[skyfishgoo]

that’s actually option 1

[pallaswept]

I just <3 d your post where you pointed that out up there, I saw it, I know you can do that. This was my reply to a differnt poster, I think the long thread ate the context of that, so here’s both:

@ggggeri91 said:

2. Navigate into "test"
3. Press Ctrl+Shift+N, enter "1" as folder name, press ENTER
4. Press Ctrl+Shift+N, enter "2" as folder name, press ENTER
5. Press Ctrl+Shift+N, enter "3" as folder name, press ENTER
6. Press Ctrl+Shift+N, enter "4" as folder name, press ENTER
7. Press Ctrl+Shift+N, enter "5" as folder name, press ENTER
8. Press Ctrl+Shift+N, enter "6" as folder name, press ENTER

...


Expected:
$ tree test
test
├── 1
├── 2
├── 3
├── 4
├── 5
└── 6

I replied that

$ tree test
test
└─ 1
   └─ 2
      └─ 3
         └─ 4
            └─ 5
               └─ 6

Seems perfectly reasonable output from that input sequence.

I don’t think either is unreasonable for a user to expect. Whether they are right, just depends which folder is selected, the old one, or the new one.

Selecting the new one does make a ton of sense so we can do stuff with our new folder (changing to it, setting folder colours, perms, opening a terminal in it, create a file in it to hit enter and open in kate, etc etc).

But so does the output at the top. Maybe the thing we want to do with our new folder is create it a sibling?

Are there any scenarios aside from creating sibling folders where we would not want the new folder selected?

Especially keeping in mind that it’s way harder to get back to it (arrow key x lots) than it is to leave it (esc)? It seems like this one use case of sibling folder creation, has a simple mechanism (press esc) that enables all the other use cases, including but not limited to nested folder creation.

The user would just need to know to expect to need to press esc if they want to deselect the folder they just created, and create one in the current location instead.

Like this person suggested like 3 weeks ago

@jamesfrederik

easiest thing is press the “escape” key to deselect the folder and move on.

[jamesfrederik]

Just to confuse things further.

I think it would be very powerful if the selected folder was treated fully as the “root” when in “Expandable Folders” mode.

So :

1. I open Dolphin, the best file manager on linux.
2. I expand my folder tree until I see the folder I want to create a folder in.
3. I select the folder.
4. CTRL+SHIFT+N and I make my folder
5. The selected folder auto-expands and the newly created folder is selected.
6. I open the split-view popover widget
7. I find something i want to put into my new folder in the popover view.
8. I activate the context menu and select “Move to other view”.
9. The files go into the selected folder.
10. And repeat.

Edit to add: I’d prefer Dolphin to have two states for files, selected, and not-selected.

I find the “focused” mode to be confusing and unhelpful. Additionally when I double click a file, I expect it to open in an app, and when I close the app, I expect the file to still be selected, so I can press delete. As it is, I get the “Selection mode”, which is something I never want to see.

[pallaswept]

@skyfishgoo

how do you make the new folder visible in icon or details view?

In icons view you change location to it
You said PWD, you meant CWD, but really it’s the location (or is it address? dolphin mixes it a bit). The CWD would be the directory you have selected, and if you don’t have one selected, then it would fall back to the location.

In details view you fold out the directory and leave the location unchanged because dolphin is freakin amazing like that.

I think you’re missing the point, which was “why do we only have two options?”.

[ggggeri91]

How about reverting the change until the workflow is figured out?

This is quiet a lengthy discussion and seems to be a very important topic. Also, it would be great to involve the community in the decision making before development begins.

Update: I’ve just found there is an open MR for reverting the change. Thank you!

[Lenry]

the way I see it, the devs force something that is confusing to use, nobody asked for, no other filemanager does, and frankly… I don’t see the need for it (of course, that could be only me, but if such need arised, every other filemanager would have implemented this already).

Dolphin now disregards the working directory. it shouldn’t.

@pallaswept

just delete one of dolphin’s best features

no, I ask to restore it’s modus operandi like it was a month ago. that’s it.

@pallaswept

We just want to think of something better.

and this isn’t something better. what was wrong with the “I am here, so I do things here” method?

@pallaswept

would be easy for a dev to write.

would a switch be easy to write? (I don’t know, I’m no dev.)

don’t get me wrong, I’m not against developement, I just don’t see this as such.

[Lenry]

From the MR:

We should change the label when a folder is selected: “Create sub-folder” or "Create folder in ", to make it explicit.

Now that is a good idea

[ggggeri91]

I can imagine that from time to time it is hard to figure out the expectations of the user-base. A polling mechanism in KDE Plasma Desktop itself could help. Ping the users about a new idea and they could select from per-defined options, submit feedback. A new poll could show up as a standard notification.

[jamesfrederik]

I switched to KDE from Gnome because they destroyed their file manager bit by bit until eventually it was too awful to use. Anyway before I switched I spent a year running an old version out of a distrobox, which I seem to remember worked fine.

I also tried running the flatpak version, and then down grading that to an older one, which I also remember as working quite well. I’m running Dolphin flatpak now on this Cosmic install and it seems to be fine. Not used it much yet though, so maybe things that don’t work so well I havn’t discovered yet.

Perhaps thats possible here, I’ll have a go and see if it can be rolled back to “before the change”.

Talking of flatpak and Gnome, one good thing they do is provide a nightly flatpak for testing, which I think is a good idea.

[skyfishgoo]

@pallaswept

Seems perfectly reasonable output from that input sequence.

in details view, i could be persuaded to agree, but each time the parent folder would need to be automatically expanded so that the new folder could be shown as selected… otherwise we have the focus ambiguity after the first subfolder is created.

however this option (option 2 from my post) does not work in icon or details view, and further it is redundant to just entering the folder name 1/2/3/4/5/6 into the first Ctrl+Shift+N dialog box.

for this reason i think @ggggeri91 expected result is more realistic.

i still come back to the idea that there should be a similar feature to the magic / that lets you use a magic to create all the folders at once by simply typing the folder name as 1 2 3 4 5 6, just like you would do with mkdir