The /info "paths" command provides a lot of very useful information to external programs; I am thankful to the Opus developers for so generously providing so much detailed information.
I'm wondering, though: when an Opus lister is in dual display mode, how I can differentiate between the tabs in each of the halves of the screen? The list of tabs returned by the "paths" command returns a straight list of all the tabs in the lister, without indicating which tabs are on the right and which are on the left. (To be sure, regarding the active tabs on each side, the XML contains an "active_tab" field which specifies which side the tab is on. However, regarding the nonactive tabs, there is no indication as to whether they are on the right side or on the left side.)
Is there any way to make this determination? If not, would it be possible to please add a field with this info to the "paths" output?
1] In terms of a good way to do it, the XML format that the "paths" command returns is perfect for this sort of thing. A new field could be added to each line, called something like "ListerSide", which would be assigned a value of "right" or "left" or "not applicable". Because of the field-based nature of XML, it wouldn't break any existing programs that make use of the current output from the "paths" command, and it would integrate seamlessly into the XML file.
2] In terms of what I need it for: you may have seen my post yesterday (Tablist management) about tablist management. I have three (fully licensed) Opus users on my team who I've been training to take advantage of Opus' many excellent features. A couple of the users have expressed interest in a more efficient way to review and manage the open tabs in the current lister, to allow them to batch-close a bunch of tabs all at once, by selecting them from a list.
Thinking about this, I realized that using the amazing power provided by the dopusrt interface, I can produce a little utility for my users to do just this: I can call the "paths" command to get the list of paths open in the current lister; then I can give the users a dialog where they can quickly select all the folders they wish to close; and then I can close these folder through the dopusrt interface (by using a series of "Go TABEXISTING" and "Go TABCLOSE" commands).
(In truth, it would be more streamlined if there would be a possibility of calling TABCLOSE directly with the handle of the tab to close. The "paths" command generously provides the exact handle of each tab, however it seems that these handles cannot be used to specify tabs in subsequent dopusrt commands, if I understand correctly).
In any case, I realized that the users are going to want to use this utility to work with a specific side of the lister - either the right side or the left side - whereas the "paths" command just provides me with a list of all of the tabs in the entire lister, on both sides, without any easy way of determining which tabs belong to each side. (Theoretically, I should be able to use the screen positions of the specified tab windows to make this determination, but these positions do not seem to consistently line up; I'm not sure why not. In any case, if it is possible for you to add a "lister side" field into the XML output of the "paths" command, it would make everything much smoother).