Folder formats & tabs

Lets say I pain-stakingly go and set a lot of folder formats how I want them to be displayed. These are all unique paths, so cant be captured with a generic wildcard path type.

Now, I navigate to them and they all work as I want, YAY!

So, now I go and define a tab group so I have tabs to get quick and easy access to the folders I have just customized. Unfortunately this doesnt work as I would of hoped / expected. It appears I have to go into each tab now and explicitly define (AGAIN!) the formats I want to use - what a pain.

As an example:

folder:
Z:\Media\Videos\

I set z:\media in folder formats to display as tiles including all sub-folders. This means I see the "Videos" folder as a tile, and when I enter the videos folder I see all the videos as tiles - as I expected / wanted.

When I set up a tab group, and define a tab to point to z:\media, I would of expected that selecting that tab (Z:\Media) would by default pick up the format defined for that folder and display tiles, but it does not, it just displays the normal file columns. If I then click on the "Videos" folder I get the contents displayed as tiles, then if I go back to the parent (Z:\Media) this is now displayed as a tile?

Folder Formats in general can get confusing, but this just adds another layer of confusion on top. I would like the tabs to just pick up the default folder format defined (And I dont see any option for this in the folder tabs options), but it looks like I will need to explicitly define the formats again for the tabs.

I have noticed though if I "Go "Z:\Temp\Media" NEWTAB=tofront" then this will pick up the format of the folder that is defined in folder formats, so I am contemplating replacing the Tab Groups function with my own function that basically just does a group of "Go {path} NEWTAB=Front" calls, as this behaves how I would expect.

It gets very confusing.

If you edit the tab group via Preferences, you can turn off some or all of the Folder Format overrides it applies to each tab. Double-click each tab in the list to edit the format that will be applied to it.

How you create the tab group can also make things easier. The best way is to open the tabs in a lister as you want them, and then right-click the tab bar and choose Groups -> Save. The Folder Formats saved into that group will match your current settings, and should already be what you want right now. They'll also probably override fewer of the Folder Format sections (although it depends on your setup), meaning fewer sections to turn off if you want to remove all Folder Format overrides from the tabs.

I'm guessing that at the moment you've been creating the tab groups by adding tabs via Preferences. That seems to turn on all the Folder Format overrides by default, and it probably shouldn't. We might be able to change that. (If you link your account, we'll give it a higher priority.)

Yes, I have just been doing it through preferences, and as you have a habit of doing, you pointed out the obvious! (re: turn off overrides) lol.

Ive got to say though folder formats are probably going to make me go bold before my time from all the head-scratching, it can feel so over-complicated some times.

In my opinion you should be able to define your "Favorites" or "Templates", which you then "link" or "attach" to a folder, in other words a way of telling a folder to inherit a format. At the moment (I think) each folder defined in folder formats has it's own explicit / unique settings. For example I could define z:\test, then "Set from favorites" > "My Favorite Format", this will then copy the "My Favorite Format" to z:\test. This then means if in the future I decide that "My Favorite Format" is not quite how I want, and want to change it, I need to go through all other folders that made reference to that favorite.

If they was just inherited, I could just update "My Favorite Format" and all folders (eg z:\test) would automatically inherit the updated format - in my opinion it would make life so much easier and a little less complicated.

Also, if it was done like that, in the "Folder Formats" section, you could add another column next to the path called "Template Used" which in the above example would show "My Favorite Format" or "Custom" - this would also help in that you could easily see, at a glance, what folders are using what template or custom settings.

Swings & roundabouts. If it worked like that, some things would be easier, but just making a folder use a particular format would become a more complex, two-step process. And saving the current format from a lister would have to somehow create a new named Favorite format, and then apply that to the folder. I think that would be more confusing, overall.

Saying that, you can probably do something similar already by using wildcard formats. Those let you define a single format which matches multiple folders, according to a wildcard or regular expression.

Unless im missing something, I dont really see how it could make some current operations more complex. What I mean is, you would keep DOpus exactly as it is at the moment, no change in functionality, but... provide an additional option to reference a template.

For example when defining formats in the Folder Formats in preferences, you are presented with this dialog:

An update would just provide a drop down of templates - or, selecting none (the default) would keep things exactly as they currently are, so the above dialog would look like:

And if I wanted to reference a template, then I could select it which would mean I could see all the details (Columns, display etc) but wouldnt be able to change them, as that is all being picked up from the template.

The problem is that the folder formats system is already multi-layered and often requires some hunting to work out where a format is coming from. Adding in another layer will complicate things. People will not see the drop-down, or they'll give up or get lost when they open a format and find it just refers to another format.

Each one of the layers there now serves a purpose and was added to enable or simplify a particular thing, as would adding your suggestion, but while each layer enables or simplifies one particular thing it also complicates everything in general. We have to be careful about what we add, particularly when there are already ways to use the existing functionality to avoid the situation in question.

FWIW - you can already 'effectively' do what you're suggesting - though not with the same sort of UI convention as you've explained with the drop down, etc.

But, through the Prefs->Folders->Folder Formats dialog, you can right click on any enabled folder format, and then PASTE that onto another folder format. It doesn't help if you're already in the 'Folder Options' dialog - say, from the clicking the 'Folder Options...' toolbar button - intending to create a new folder format for the 'current' folder. But even then there is a very simple solution... create several "Favorite" formats as your "templates"... create a button that runs the properties formatlist command... and before opening the folder options dialog to define a new format for the current folder - just use that new 'properties' command button to select one of your template/favorite folder formats from the list to load into the current lister - and THEN open the folder options dialog. All the loaded template format settings will be reflected in the dialog then - where you can either save as is - or make whatever adjustments to.

In moments of confusion - also be aware of the folder format "lock" icon in the bottom right corner of the default status bar. Hovering over it displays a popup that tells you a bit about how Opus has derived the currently displayed format... whether via an explicit folder format, or inherited from a layout, or even from your initial case - from formats defined for specific tabs in a tab group, etc.

@Jon/Leo: i just noticed the format lock doesn't call out if the current display format is due to a 'Style' or not... likely enhancement - or bug?

Should have better said - you can first right click and 'Copy' an existing folder format (i.e. one of several formats you might define as a 'template') then 'Paste' that to another (new) format you're creating. This will apply all of the 'copied' format settings to the new one you're pasting them to.

No need to create any buttons. If you've created some Favorite formats, you can apply them to the current folder via the Folder Options dialog.


Seems wrong from a quick look. I've opened a bug for it. (Looking at another thing at the moment so only had a brief look at it.)

Woop... look at that - who knew?