I'm pretty sure I've seen at least one earlier thread where this feature was requested a while ago, but I can't find the thread now.
Here's a screenshot from WizTree that gives an idea of what I have in mind:
Some remarks:
- Basically it's like the folder tree except it displays files as well. Alternatively, we can describe it as an outliner (like e.g. WorkFlowy, Dynalist (or Ecco Pro etc)) except that the terminal nodes can store files (not just text).
- I didn't find any file manager that has this feature. (The only app I found that has an approximation of this feature is WizTree (as in the above screenshot), but it's not really a file manager). So, if dopus implements this feature, it would likely be a first among file managers. And users of conventional outliners could be interested as well, since dopus equipped with this feature would contain an extremely powerful outliner as a feature subset (powerful not just in that it's an outliner that can store files, but also in that by using hardlinks etc it automatically has a feature that so many outliner users want but couldn't get implemented well, i.e. "cloning" or "transclusion"; there's also all the tagging, metadata, label-based automatic coloring etc)
- note that dopus already has 'manual positioning'. So it has already taken the first steps towards replicating the full functionality of an outliner. Adding this feature would just be a natural development!
- Why would anyone want this feature? The benefits are subtle and not easy to appreciate until you spend some times seriously imagining what the workflow would look like. Here's one small thing to get you started. One disadvatage with the conventional, Window Explorer-inspired approach is that context switch happens too often. For example, suppose I'm browsing my photos collection. Suppose in my photos folder there are a set of photos shot in 'burst mode' and naturally I put them all in a folder (called let's say 'abc'), to group them together. Now, if I'm simply browsing my photos folder and come across the folder 'abc', I might simply want to take a quick peek inside 'abc', not actually 'entering' the folder (An analogy is: I might want to stand at the threshold of a storage room and peek inside to see what's in there, rather than actually stepping inside the room.) With Windows Exporer this isn't possible. You must, so to speak, step inside the room, close the door behind you, (therefore lose a bit of yoru bearings, a bit of the overall sense of what task you are in the middle of doing) even if all you wanted is to take a quick peek of what's in the room. (Dopus is better in this regard because you can use a separate pane and open the folder in the other pane. However, this still isn't ideal, because e.g. if you want to expand two folders at the same time and compare their contents while keeping the tree structure - here's what I mean
you can't simulate that with the dual pane functionality.) - anyway, as I said, this is not one of those features that's easy to argue for by citing specific benefits. So I don't hold out much hope of it being implemented in the near run. Just thought I'd put (really: revive, since I saw it suggested before) the idea in the mind of dopus developers. Maybe one day you'll consider implementing it!
