I still don't understand display of folder columns

I asked a question about the display of folder columns and content about a year ago - the answer has not made it any clearer to me.

I have a structure of folders on I:. The default situation, if I bring this up in a lister is Name, Size, Type, Modified, Attr, and a mass of blanks. This seems to be the standard setting for folders with Music content. The width of the Name column shows a long folder/file name 'zzzz5zzz10zzzz5zzz20zzzz5zzz30zzzz5zzz40zzzz5zzz50' as 'zzzz5zzz10zzzz5zzz20zzzz...' and if I step down sub-folder by sub-folder to I:\My Music\Music By Artist\mp3\Andrew Hill\Black Fire at each stage I have the same width of the Name column.

If I now go back to the root, and shift the display from Size right until Modified is rightmost, the name field now shows 'zzzz5zzz10zzzz5zzz20zzzz5zzz30zzzz5zzz40z...'
which is a distinct improvement. If I go back to the root, or step down to I:\My Music\Music By Artist I'm back to the narrow Name column.
I can get the whole thing to work as I want it if I lock the lister, but then I lose the content-oriented displays for music and images. If I once look in a folder which contains images, Dopus will insist on showing me images for every folder thereafter, even when it doesn't contain ANY image files.

I personally think that Dopus is one of the very best products I've found, but I get extremely irritated and frustrated by these behaviours.

You could turn on column auto-sizing. Or double-click the divider to auto-size the columns without them always doing it automatically. There's also a hotkey you can press: Ctrl and + on the numeric keypad (by default).

Are the questions about format lock and content formats answered by the Folder Formats FAQ?

You can go to the root of your music directory, adjust the columns to want suits you and then click Tools> Folder Options> Save> and pick For this Folder. The folders below that should inherit this setting.

Alternetly, you can do what I've done and create different Listers for different content.
Like this:

[My desktop: Main lister right monitor, working lister dual in mid of left monitor, music a single lister set to music as type, graphics set to images. I also saved the main and dual listers as my "default" lister and they both open together where you see then when I launch DOpus.]

Set a lister up how you like and then click Settings> Lister Layouts> Save this Lister and give it a name. To use click Settings>ListerLayouts>Name.

Or you can change the default columns for a given media type in Settings> Preferences> Folders> Folder Formats> Content Type Formats> Music: Edit> Columns..

Hope I helped a little,
Landis.

No, it doesn't answer the folder format questions. I though I'd fixed it by right-clicking on a column header in the root, selecting More and actually setting the sizes I wanted. It seemed to work for a while, until I found that I have to do this for each side of my standard 2-up lister.

I think I have it stabilized to something I can live with now; thanks for the prompt replies.

How to set the columns width and settings once and for all.

  1. Click preferences -->> Folders ---->> Folder Formats, you will see this, you need to double click on each one with red and perform 4 settings.

Make sure to uncheck the ""Include columns from other matching formats.""

Example of my MP3 Folders:

It might take 10 to 15 minutes to do but you won't need to do it agian.

You can also right-click on items to copy and paste their settings to other items.

Also, if you want the same stuff for everything, then you can simply turn off most of the checkboxes (for View, Image, etc.) for the other formats, except the Default ones (where there's no checkbox to turn off, since they're the bottom line).

Sorry to put this here, after searching for an hour and reading the manual I still do not understand what I need to reference for my question. I just started with Opus yesterday as a trial.

[quote]
[My desktop: Main lister right monitor, working lister dual in mid of left monitor, music a single lister set to music as type, graphics set to images. I also saved the main and dual listers as my "default" lister and they both open together where you see then when I launch DOpus.] [/quote]

The above quote is from Lunar on Wednesday October 18, 2006

The picture he has posted has a view that helps with my question. In his picture on the right he refers to his main lister. In the picture you see the text is red and blue. On my screen I have Red, Blue, and Black. What I see is that folder text tends to be blue and file text is black, yet I have some red folder text and red file text.

I want to know why these are in red.
Where to you find the explanation of color signifcance?
My Shapes folder is red; why? If it matters the attributes are ---s-

Thanks!

Jim[/b]

Okay, these forums are huge and a bite to search when you don't know the terminalogy.

I found the color setting and what they go to under:

setting>preferences>Display>Colors & Fonts

That is where I found the color red to be for system files and folders along with Conflicting Items.

What are Conflicting Items? I'm still searching but have yet to find an answer.

Thanks!

Jim

The Conflicting Items colour is used by the Synchronize tool to indicate files which will be overwritten. I don't think it's used anywhere else. (Maybe the Duplicate Finder also uses it? I'm not certain. Anyway, it's for that kind of thing, to highlight files which conflict with each other and may be overwritten or deleted.)