No auto-refresh and no archive drag'n'drop

Help & Support
1

I love Opus 12, and this is extreme nitpicking, but ....

I have had the following issues with Opus since version 10, it still happens in Opus 12.

a) Sometimes when I copy or move files from zip/rar archives into another folder using a dual lister, the information in the target list does not update. E.g. a folder remains listed as "empty" although there are now files in it, file sizes are listed as the old value, although they have been overwritten.

A similar problem occurs with non-refreshing of file listing details (file sizes still listed as old size after overwriting, new files not appearing, folder sizes still listed as the wrong size, etc.), almost always, when copying or moving between USB memory sticks, or from memorystick to/from HD.

As far as I see it, in 2016, I should NEVER have to "manually refresh". If for some reason I have to manually refresh, it should at least be happening in a consistent logical way, e.g. I should be able to know before the operation I attempt that "this one will require a manual refresh". For example, ALWAYS when copying to USB stick. But it seems to work inconsistently, sometimes it refreshes the list and sometimes it doesn't.

c) I cannot drag and drop files out of archives into other programs, like I can with normal files (why not extract to temporary ram-disk?)

d) When "copy-as" out of archives, it asks me for the new name for the first file, but sometimes Opus uses that new name for all the files, even overwriting (without confirmation), the original file with the second one that is extracted, etc.

I have not found exact ways to reproduce any of these frustrations, but they happen often enough during heavy use, I would say once every week or so I encounter one of these problems. Maybe some of the developers have encountered other reports of this, and maybe this vague explanation might help. I will update this thread as soon as I can reproduce some of these gripes consistently.

2

Auto-refresh works perfectly in Finder on OSX by the way, so it is possible in principle. I am not sure auto-refresh works consistently in Windows Explorer, because I never use that anymore. I wonder if the refresh notifications are just broken in the underlying OS layer in Windows and that is just completely beyond repair, and Opus cannot do anything about it...

3

Another thing that finder on OSX does is to show a progress bar in the size column while a large file is being copied/downloaded. This makes sense since the file is not "fully there" yet. That progress bar then turns into the correct file size once the file operation has finished. This would be a great addition to Opus, too and might solve the problem of "which filesize to display during long operations" :slight_smile:

4

Not sure why we are talking about OS X here. Let's stick to Windows. :slight_smile:

[ul][li]a) Folder sizes are never refreshed automatically, only on-demand. Auto-refreshing folders would probably be a performance drain.

If file sizes or other metadata are not being updated, see Changes to folders are not always detected for debugging steps, and please post the debug output so we can see if it indicates anything unusual (e.g. the device could be reporting the change notifications using different paths to what Opus is expecting, if there is more than one way to represent the paths on that device).

It's also possible the device is not generating change notifications at all, or is only sending some, or has a long delay before it sends them. If so, the problem may lie with the device, drivers or filesystem involved. The debug log can help reveal that as well, if it is what is happening.

If something in the system is generating a huge flood of change events, it can also cause events to start being dropped. As with the other possibilities, the debug logs will show it as well.

[/li]
[li]b) Was there a b? :slight_smile:

[/li]
[li]c) Drag & drop from archives to other programs works, provided the drop target supports streams, which not all do. If it didn't work, you wouldn't be able to drag files from an archive to the Windows desktop.

Double-click and the Open With menu and various commands (e.g. to run a program with the filepath given) can all be used to extract files to temp and then pass it to the program, too. Just not drag & drop, for numerous technical reasons.

[/li]
[li]d) That sounds like something which was fixed recently. I'm not sure if the fix has been released yet but I remember Jon working on something like that.[/li][/ul]

(General point: This thread is in danger of becoming spaghetti if we talk about all of these things at once. One question per thread is best.)

5

I also have to constantly hit Refresh manually for various operations.

One example: Calculate Folder Sizes Automatically is on for All Local Drives but when I'm inside a folder and go up, the new size of the folder is not shown.

6

The up button runs "Go Up Back" (or similar) by default, which will re-use the cached view of the folder (if there is one) instead of triggering a fresh read and size re-calc.

Edit the Up button to remove the "Back" argument.

Also make sure Preferences / Miscellaneous / Advanced: go_up_always_back is False, and Preferences / File Displays / Border / File display border Up button does "Up Back" is off if you are using the static header mode (unlikely).

7

Thank you for the great and long answer.

Concerning the auto-refresh, could it be possible to have DOpus rely less on the change notifications from the OS, which seem unreliable at best in Windows, and instead "auto-refresh" by itself in certain instances. Opus must know when it iself just copied or changed something in some folder or some lister, so why not auto-refresh afterwards if it knows there was a change? This might help a lot with those USB drives that never send change notifications. Or would this be too much of a resource hog?