Inconsistent Display Behaviour In Dual Status Bar

I have a dual lister setup with a dual status bar. The status bar works as it should when listing the contents of a drive(s) in both listers, however, if one of the listers is listing the drives attached to the computer the status bar defaults to a single status display. Is this a bug, a feature or am I missing a setting somewhere?


Dual lister as it should work; status bar is dual.


Dual lister listing drive contents in one lister and attached drives in the other lister has defaulted to single status bar display. It doesn't matter which is the active lister, the status bar remains single whether listing the drives or the contents although it does change to reflect which is the active lister.


That is by design. The Computer folder has a special status bar, since the general (user-configurable) status bar is not applicable to it.

What the Computer folder is active (i.e. the Source), it will override the status bar. Change folders, or make the other file display active, and you'll get your normal status bar.

Hi Leo, I think maybe you've missed my point slightly. If you look at capture-1.png you will see that I have one of the listers as the source and listing the contents of a folder yet the status bar is single even though it actually says 'dual'. If this behaviour can't be avoided when a lister is displaying drives (as in capture-1.png), why is the status bar info for the lister displaying a directories contents at the far left and far right of the status bar when normally it is grouped together? See capture-3.png

The status bar is only showing info for one side (because using the dual status bar would not work when one side isn't a real folder), but the lister is still in dual mode (it has two displays). So the status bar field showing the lister's state still shows "dual", as it should. Nothing wrong there that I can see.

Ok, thanks. I'll 'put up with it' although it does seem quirky behaviour to me. If the status bar, as in the context of the program itself, is 'global' would it not be a better idea to program the listers with their own 'local' status bar to alleviate the quirkiness? Just a thought. :slight_smile:

I don't think words like 'global' vs 'local' really apply here... I see it in pretty simple terms what I think would make the most sense to most people though:

I fully understand what Leo is saying about a normal file/folder oriented status bar just not making sense for the Computer location. And so I think it makes perfect sense that - in a single display lister scenario - whatever we have defined for the status bar gets overridden by a status bar that make more sense for the Computer display when you navigate to that location...

That said, I don't see why - if in a dual display lister scenario, where one side is a regular folder and the other is the Computer location - we couldn't still have the same override take place just on the side where the Computer path is displayed...? Keep the normal "dual display" status bar config on the side with the regular folder, and just override the other side display with the one that makes sense for the Computer path...

Hardly something I think needs immediate priority compared to other things - but still, something I'd consider would make more sense to a majority of users...

The dual status bar definition doesn't actually set up different "sides" - it's just an alternate definition that could do anything. How would Opus know which bits to use and which to replace?

I was thinking more of the programming side of opus itself. A 'global' status bar, to my mind, would be one that is instantiated separately to any lister that was instantiated. Whereas a 'local' status bar would be instantiated WITH the lister that was instantiated at the time and associated with it. Think of this hypothetical scenario, lets say I could set up opus to have three (or more) listers side by side as in the dual lister display, would the status bar be able to reflect the statuses of all three or more listers? To my mind, no, unless they were 'attached' programatically to that particular lister. I hope I'm making sense here.

Think of it this way: in a single document interface (SDI) there would be one status bar, in a multi document interface (MDI) each opened window could have its own status bar. Why can't each lister have its own dedicated status bar below it?

I'm not trying to be being critical or negative here; merely suggestive to a more consistent user experience.

Something like that has been on our ideas list for a while as it would simplify things somewhat, and has some other advantages. It's pretty far down the list, though, since the current system works well in almost all cases and when/if we change it we'll have the pain of breaking everyone's existing status bar setups (unless we keep the old way around for compatibility, but that's not always a great idea in the long term as it makes things more complex).

(BTW, Lister = the whole window. File Display = the individual sides of a dual-display window, and/or individual folder tabs when there are multiple tabs.)

Thanks Leo, I see, in the end, we were thinking on the same lines although my terminology differed. I understand that it would be a big change to reprogram opus to this new model and that the old adage applies: 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Maybe this could be introduced in opus v11? It just seemed a logical thing to me. :slight_smile: