New ideas

Something is missing in Far Manager? You have a great idea that should be heared? Write here.
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t-rex
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Post by t-rex »

Lofote
Well, there is one good reason to save settings not in the registry which is if you want to run FAR from a USB flash card (or simillar) on some one elses computer which may have limited privledges etc.

paul_kiss
INI can not possibly be used as a substitute for the registry. A much better format is needed. As far as I know there is some one that is working on a tool that will intercept registry access and interface it to some XML flavoured format. When and if this tool will released I don't know.
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Post by Lofote »

@paul_kiss: Sorry for being so rude, its just that I made such discussion with many programmers who make my work as an admin extremely hard because they use such stuff. Sorry :)...

@t-rex: No this is not a good reason. Why? The registry *fully* supports this scenario, when done right by the programmer (and the cool thing is: FAR does it right :) ).
*Everybody* on a Windows system has write access to HKEY_CURRENT_USER (with the exception of some specific keys, all called "Policies"). Even guests with so-called mandatory profiles have this, although their settings will be erased once they log off.
If you want to run FAR from a USB flash card or a CD-ROM or anything else, with your setting, you can easily do so. Just let the settings save from the SaveSettings.bat. And put it on the CD/USB flash card. Modify the RestoreSettings.bat, so that only the FarSave1.reg part is imported - rem out the FarSave2.reg part. When attaching to the other's computer, simply run that RestoreSettings.bat first. Or even do an own batch that does the regedit-part of RestoreSettings.bat and then immediatly starts FAR.
All this porting to a different format will only nullify a lot of other advantages and thats what most programmers (not having much knowledge about how Windows deals with user profiles especially in networks) do.
Oh and please forget *ANYTHING* you hear about some XML format. XML is even far slower than INI files, and has *absolutely* no advantage, except maybe for some structured hierarchie (which also makes it a lot harder to parse for humans who don't understand the XML format by heart by the way). XML is *not* a good way to store settings, it is a way to store fixed data, or data that does not change more than once per tool session from a data processing program. It is a great way to exchange data between multiple programs, but it is absolutely one of the worst thing to do for saving program settings (the only thing worse is a propiertary binary format). Just try to read 100+ settings from a XML file. FAR would start a *lot* slower then, and why love FAR because it is so fast and handy, don't we?...

In short words: FAR does it the right way, and *everything* you want can be done in exact this way, it is just a way of describing the end user how s/he can do such things like copying settings to other systems, even if they have only user or guest rights.


Hope to have cleared up a few stuff and shed some light from the network admin sight :)...
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t-rex
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Post by t-rex »

Lofote
You don't get it man. There are situations when it is needed to run FAR without messing up with the existing registry settings and/or when no registry access is available (for example under Fortress or similar security software). And well there are some folks out there that for whatever reason, like settings files better than the registry.
If they want to suffer and use that it's totaly their problem but you cannot prevent them from doing so.
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Post by Lofote »

Well, if it is optional it is fine with me, but I hope it is never being considered as being *replaced*. This is the primary concern I have, I hoped this was clear, sorry if it was not so.
Just don't break things that were superb so far.

BTW I don't understand why FAR should be messing up with any existing registry settings other than FAR settings itself. It doesn't mess up at all with any other keys other than below HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Far, except when you use the Setup program which also creates Uninstall entries and optionally file associations (which both do not occur if running from an USB stick).

Oh and I don't understand why such security software exists. Such is a bad workaround instead of using operating system security for example with mandatory user profiles. I guess they are the same guys who build personal firewalls, eh :)? But ok, this is not of discussion here - but coming back on topic, on such protected systems I doubt it is allowed to use an executable from an own medium such like far.exe - I mean if it is locked down so far, there must be a reason, eh :)? (Plus usually the running of non-approved .EXE is most likely disabled as well - be it using Windows methods, be it using some sort of strange security software).


Cya :)...
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t-rex
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Post by t-rex »

No, the use of registry will never be replaced.
ishar
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something i would like

Post by ishar »

Hello people.

Here are some visual options I would gladly see/use in FAR Manager:
1. Ability to set f/bg color of special char. put before filenames in Files highlighting. That way firstly this char. would look more separated from the filename, instead of "flowing" into it if set correctly; secondly I could make them more icon like.
2. Possibility to change the style of the panels' border. With my color scheme a single line border for example would look much better.

Another nice function would be (although I admit its usually unnecessary) to be able to edit descriptions associated with the short filename, or even with the filename that would be in ISO cd file system (if this can be determined at all - maybe by aasigning a directory as the future CD session's root ?). This way I could attach nice and descriptive information to the files, whose names can be useless and ugly in a DOS environment for example.

Oh. And isn't there a way to use more than that 16 colors, or custom colors? My highlights are either hard to see or have too much contrast.

Thanks in advance any time taken to answer / realize these requests / ideas.
Sky6
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Interface

Post by Sky6 »

Can be great to use a better interface not looking the DOS !!! It will be a great visual change for all users.
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Post by HaRT »

Sky6
FAR isn't what you think it is.
If you dislike its UI, please use some other file manager.
ishar
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colors

Post by ishar »

Is there no hope to have customizeable - not selectable - colors, or at least a broader palette in FAR?
----------------- update -----------------------------------------
before the unlikely event of a reply, I add that I found out that the console windows's EGA colors can be changed, so the question is mostly deprecated ( but if there is hope still for more colors or any other additions to the customization options of the layout, I'd be happy to hear about it).
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Re: something i would like

Post by HaRT »

ishar wrote:1. Ability to set f/bg color of special char. put before filenames in Files highlighting.
After the filters had been re-worked about a year ago, highlighting has such a feature (and much more).
ishar wrote:isn't there a way to use more than that 16 colors
Unfortunately, it's a Windows limitation for all console windows, in order to describe each character cell's BG&FG colour with one byte.
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t-rex
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Post by t-rex »

1. You can edit the console palette.
2. 16 coloros is enough for everything, 99.9% of users wouldn't use more even if it was possible.
sicvolo
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Post by sicvolo »

t-rex wrote:1. You can edit the console palette.
2. 16 coloros is enough for everything, 99.9% of users wouldn't use more even if it was possible.
Yeah, right. and "640K of memory is ought to be enough for anybody"(c) Gates.
I run out of these the minute I started customizing my FAR's look and feel.

to ishar:
look for a thing called ConEmu - it lets you customize fonts and colors more freely than the native windows console
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t-rex
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Post by t-rex »

sicvolo
1. Gates never said that.
2. I said 99.9% - you probably fall in the 0.1%. Do a simple test - open word and create more than 16 lines each with a different color (same background) and tell me if you can easily distinguish between them all?
ishar
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re

Post by ishar »

HaRT: Thanks for the info. I'll probably check out the in-development versions then.

t-rex: You're right more or less. (Although some additional way to mark filetypes besides colors would help - like the prefix chars, but those mostly just melt into the filename being the same f/bcolor and without spacing (as it was until now), thus failing the purpose of distinguishing quickly and easily.) Now that I can deviate from that fixed EGA palette, that 16 is both much more useable and pleasant. Sometimes it seems only 1 more could help, but the need isn't that bad. (I found the console color change option as I wrote - problem was at first that I thought only the selected background and foreground colors (2) can be customized by the look of the Properties page, but later I became more desperate and experimented more to find that all can be...)

sicvolo: Thx. I was going to look into console tweaking utils some time.
sicvolo
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Post by sicvolo »

t-rex,

The problem with using 16 colors is exactly what you said - they are too close. Half of the colors can not be distinguished easily from another half, regardless of the background. And I am not color blind.

Can the color selection be ever expanded without resorting to console emulators?
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