I believe he is referring to inline rename, where you current can press Ctrl+Left Arrow and Ctrl+Right Arrow to go to the next word. Currently though Opus only recognizes the next word when it is preceded by a space.
I submitted an official feature request for this. It does make a lot of sense and hopefully it should be simple enough to add. (This is not a guarantee though, I do not represent GP Software.)
What do people want this feature for? If you want to split CamelCase filenames up into words with spaces between them then a rename preset could be made to do that fairly easily and would be much better than doing it by hand.
I can't think of many situations where I'd be dealing with a CamelCase filename that was long enough where it would be useful to be able to quickly jump to capital letters within it but maybe you guys encounter such files regularly? What kind of situations do they appear in?
I had the same reaction at first, but I thought about it a bit more. It's not about a rename operation. It's about data entry (anywhere in Opus).
This idea makes just as much sense as the current behavior where in any Opus field, the user can press Ctrl+Left Arrow to jump ahead to the next word in the longer string. The thing is, the next word is always defined as being preceded by a space character. Although the current behavior is more globally accepted across many applications, it is a bit discriminatory.
When you work with files formatted for Internet use or both Internet use and human readability, then you can end up file names like.
Windows: This Is A Sample Long File Name.txt Internet: this_is_a_sample_long_file_name.txt Hybrid: ThisIsASampleLongFileName.txt
From the user's data entry perspective, if it makes sense to be able to jump ahead to the next word in the first file name above, then it also makes equal sense for the other two file names (so long as some rule can be logically applied).
Any field in Opus supports the first file name. These users are asking for support of the third file name above. And this would be across all Opus fields, forms, etc.
It may or may not be feasible, depending on if Opus handles this data entry conventions itself, or uses a behavior pulled from Windows.
Well, my thinking is that if I ever encountered a file with a name like that the first thing I would do would be insert spaces into the name so it isn't horrible, and that could be done using a rename preset. That's why I'm wondering what situations these filenames appear in where people don't want to rename them.
Only situation I can think of is things like Java class names where the filenames are usually short and one or two words and if you rename them you have a lot of other things to worry about besides just the filename (and can rename them automatically via Eclipse's refactoring menu or similar).
I'm not against the idea if there's a good reason for it but I am wondering if its only use would be to do something that can already be done in a quicker and easier way (i.e. inserting spaces into the name).
[quote="nudel"]Well, my thinking is that if I ever encountered a file with a name like that the first thing I would do would be insert spaces into the name so it isn't horrible, and that could be done using a rename preset. That's why I'm wondering what situations these filenames appear in where people don't want to rename them.
Only situation I can think of is things like Java class names where the filenames are usually short and one or two words and if you rename them you have a lot of other things to worry about besides just the filename (and can rename them automatically via Eclipse's refactoring menu or similar).
I'm not against the idea if there's a good reason for it but I am wondering if its only use would be to do something that can already be done in a quicker and easier way (i.e. inserting spaces into the name).[/quote]
Yes I'm actually a Java programmer, so we have a lot of files LikeThis at work. We are currently evaluating Opus and we loved it.
The other thing kenalcock said about ThisWord should be as easy to "tokenize" as_this_one, or perhaps the latter even easier.
Another point, at least in my personal interest, work apart are MP3 files. Sometimes I download a couple of files with 45 characteres named with underscores xcv_xcvx_01_xcvxvcx_xcvxcvxc_asda_asd.mp3, that's horrible.
This and in general Opus from my perspective is not just about prety software, it's about not losing time, earning time.
At least for programmers and mp3 users this could be an interesting option.
@Leo It sounds like you are stuck in the paradigm of renaming things to add spaces, or renaming several files. That's not the case. The user may not want to add spaces, but merely want to rename one file, retaining the CamelHump file name format. Or they may be entering a file name in the Find Utility Panel to search for. And the user mistypes the name (or forgot a word in the name) and wants to edit it before executing a new search.
It's a data entry thing. It's not a rename thing. It's just building on the conventions already available in any data entry field everywhere in Opus the user can type text.
Every image I post on the forums here is named in CamelHump (I never heard that name before this thread but it is very apropos). I also name images like this when I use them on eBay. I can't use spaces in the file name under these circumstances, so I use CamelHump.
But if I want to rename the image file below, it requires dozens of Right Arrow keystrokes (or click forever with the mouse to try to get between the correct two characters) to get to the region of the file name that I want to change.
Old Image Name: ThisIsASampleLongFileName.jpg New Image Name: ThisIsAnExampleNameInCamelHump.jpg
CamelHump allows a user to read the filename better and still post it online or use it in a website. It's only diehard Windows users that frown on it because they know you have to be more careful with when hosting such files on a Unix server (that differentiates upper and lower case letters). they are worried about typing addresses wrong or whatever. In my opinion they are just lazy and don't want to ensure all their internal links are correct.
What kinds of things are you doing with those files when you want to be able to Ctrl-Arrow through the names? Presumably not renaming them (usually best done in the IDE) but something else? Is it when searching for things as Ken suggests?
(I probably sound like I'm totally against the idea and trying to pick holes in it. I'm not; I just want to understand what and where it would be used in case something else would make sense, and out of pure curiosity.)
That's why there are a number of rename presets for automatically fixing up MP3 names in a single click. No need to correct by hand when a preset will do it.
(The presets range from simple replacement of underscores with spaces, through to generating filenames from music tags while ignoring the original names completely, through to complex VBScript presets which apply lots of "tidy-up" rules to the filenames.)
Indeed, searching things is very good example of that. Also note that although some operations are best done with the IDE (in my case IntelliJ), others are done apart from it: FTP, CVS or encoding files. And being able to manipulate them as most similar as the IDE does, would be great.
I understand your point: a feature request must be based on something solid, not just desire
Well I hope the devolpers can take a glimpse of it.
There's also the thing that spaces in names are good for common use; but when using descriptive names on servers, HTTP for example, spaces are not recomended.
Thus using a descriptive name like PathToMyFiles/YourFile1.html is much better than pathtomyfiles/yourfile1.html. I mean easier to read without compromising the server-like recomendations not to use spaces in names.
Good feature because generally, in a filename, whoever created the file is either going to use capitalization to break up word or spaces, it's unlikely such capitalization would be used randomly. Makes sense to make Ctrl+Left/Right work like this in a filemanager.
I often find me throwing the cursor with CTRL-LEFT/RIGHT
and sadly it runs over the, at least to me, obvious "stops".
Image a filename like this: "20070108_lala_v01.txt"
You hit F2 and want to jump directly to "lala" or change the
version part, CTRL-LEFT/RIGHT takes you to the start/end,
where I'd rather have the cursor stop at the start/end of
each part of the filename. Like it is now, there's not much
difference to using Pos1/End (except when there are spaces
in the name, which i try to avoid as hell..).