Add 'New' sub-menu; desktop and folder right-click

Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: Add 'New' sub-menu; desktop and folder right-click
started by: john.martzouco

Posted by john.martzouco on Dec. 05 2007,09:57

I don't know if this is on the dfm menu or not... but, for the data-centric model, an equivalent to the Windows 'New...' command would be very helpful.

I think about how I use Windows data-centrically and I'm very often going: right-click, New, Text File. Then I double-click the file, scribble a note or copy/paste a long email (before I try to send it through webmail and lose the contents because of some unforeseen glitch). This is how I get new images and zip files started as well. Are others creating data like this too?

The right-click/New helps put new data-files "at your fingertips".

I only use a few...

.txt
.bmp (.jpg or .gif would be better)
.xls (spreadsheet)
.doc (.pdf would be nice)
.zip
and folders

It would be pretty easy to add a sub-menu and call "touch" to create new files, wouldn't it? We'd have to have a logic loop for default naming the new file and offer a default naming scheme (configurable of course).

I know that emelFM offers this, but I think there would be a lot less steps involved if it was always accessible. And besides, firing up emelFM kind of takes away from the data-centric model of data before app.

Is there a 'Send To' when right-clicking on a file or folder?

Posted by mikshaw on Dec. 05 2007,12:47

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I think about how I use Windows data-centrically and I'm very often going: right-click, New, Text File.

I did that a lot, too. But I find it easier now to use touch or stdout to create a file, rather than right-click -> New -> Text, right-click -> Rename -> type-type-type. If I'm still going to need to rename the document after it's been created, the creation via mouse was just wasted effort. This isn't really an argument against your idea, though, because...

Quote

It would be pretty easy to add a sub-menu and call "touch" to create new files, wouldn't it?

Yes.

Quote

Is there a 'Send To' when right-clicking on a file or folder?

I don't think so, but I'm not going to say for certain. Most of my file managing is done within the midnight commander, which allows you to type in an arbitrary destination when copying the file. In other words, you don't have to browse to the destination directory before copying like you would with some other file managers. I don't know if Emelfm does this.

Either approach might not be considered "data-centric", if by that term you are implying that it requires the use of mouse clicks and gui elements. I don't have any idea what the term means, or even if it actually means anything, considering everything is data, and the same actions are performed on this data regardless of whether you're using a mouse on a desktop or keyboard in a visual shell.

Posted by humpty on Dec. 05 2007,13:46

not everyone likes to have too much in the menus. some of the more bloaty distros are examples to that.
the positive side of keeping it simple is that the learning curve is minimal too.
like fluxbox, for example, you might experiment with adding something to .fluxbox/menu:
e.g
[submenu] (New) {}
[exec] (.txt) {touch ~/.dfmdesk/temp.txt && beaver ~/.dfmdesk/temp.txt}
[end]
you can probably do something in .jwmrc too.

Posted by lucky13 on Dec. 05 2007,14:08

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It would be pretty easy to add a sub-menu and call "touch" to create new files, wouldn't it? We'd have to have a logic loop for default naming the new file and offer a default naming scheme (configurable of course).

You can set up different root menus in jwm to handle that kind of thing so you needn't set up a submenu in the main (jwmrc).

From the configuring page:

Code Sample

onroot
Determine which buttons on the root window activate the menu. This is a list of integers specifying buttons. The default is 123. Note that multiple root menus may be used by specifying different buttons to activate them. Valid values in this list are 0 to 9. Note that the usual mouse buttons are 1 for the left button, 2 for the middle button, 3 for the right button, and 4 and 5 for the scroll wheel. Therefore, accessing root menus that are assigned to buttons 0, 6, 7, 8, or 9 will typically require the use of a tray button or key binding.

< http://joewing.net/programs/jwm/config.shtml#root >

So 3 can be set up and dedicated to do "new ___" options and various file management tasks.

Another idea would be to hack a lua dialog box that opens per keybinding (or icon in dfm) and lets you choose what you want to create, etc., with little icons to choose from "new folder," "new text," "new rtf," etc.

EDIT: Right click in dfm gives the Create option for folder and file, so this would be redundant to a degree.

Posted by roberts on Dec. 05 2007,15:19

Its should remain a function of the file manger and not window manager. Otherwise we have redundant functions that are confusing to support and lose being window manager agnostic.

Right click on any icon and the submenu is called Create, I suppose it could be changed to to New so Windows users know what it means.