New Field Type - Folder Formats (Breadcrumbs) ?!

Making lister Formats more transparent
[ul]Background:[ul]Opus provides a hierarchical system for defining the format of listers. Under Prefs - Folders - Folder Formats you can look them up and edit them. For a given current folder the use of the Folder Options dialog (right-click on a lister Column Title, More...) is less transparent - IMO - than it could be though.[/ul]
Suggestion:[ul]Add a "?" (Help) icon to the Folder Options dialog to provide extra help for the exact implications of the buttons Save, Clear and Reset. Especially what Save For All Folders and Clear For All Folders actually do to the Prefs - Folders - Folder Formats entries.[/ul][/ul]

Field Type - Folder Formats (Breadcrumbs) - format feedback!
[ul]Background:[ul]Changing folders in a lister can become quite "exciting" when you do not fully remember why the lister is changing from e.g. a default PowerMode into some other mode. Even after having Beta-Tested up to Opus 8, it took me quite a while to figure out what was happening. I checked for explicit Folder Formats, but found nothing. The Field Type - Content Type in my Toolbar was showing "Programs", so I thought it must be something related to File Types dialog, File Type Groups, but those do not change the lister format. So I was at a loss what was happening in my lister.

I then tried resetting the issue via Folder Options dialog, but that only helped temporarily (obviously, because one needs to be fully aware that changes here are only temporary, again something I had forgotten, plus as it turns out you cannot fix Content Type Formats from here). After some more testing I finally remembered that the formats for the File Types are set up in Prefs - Folders - Folder Formats - Content Type Formats, and indeed here the Programs entry was causing the trouble (can it be this is actually a new entry for Opus 9?).[/ul]
In Short:[ul]This goes to show that it is far from trivial, e.g. even for folks that use Opus every day, but do not change the formats very often, to remember where to look to fix situations like the above. So how could one get a overview of what makes Opus show the current lister the way it does, i.e. a visualization of the format hierarchy would really really help.[/ul]

Solution:[ul]Please create a new field type called Field Type - Folder Formats (Breadcrumbs), that shows the current lister format hierarchy via Breadcrumbs (basically rehash the Field Type - Path (Breadcrumbs)). Clicking on each element in the format hierarchy would open up the appropriate Prefs page to let the user quickly check/fix the current format situation.

As an idea, one could possibly temporarily turn off elements of the hierarchy to test format behavior in the lister.[/ul]

Hierarchy examples:[ul]
[ul]Default Custom > Default Network Drive > Content Type 'Programs' > Folder 'C:\Windows'[/ul]
In this case an explicit folder format exists for the current folder, so double-clicking Folder 'C:\Windows' would open up the Prefs - Folders - Folder Formats, Folder Formats list.

[ul]Default Custom > Default Network Drive > Content Type 'Movies'[/ul]
Means that a File Type Groups (File Type dialog) exists for movies that can edited under Prefs - Folders - Folder Formats, Content Type Formats list via double-click on the Content Type 'Movies' element.

[ul]Default Custom > ZIP[/ul]
Means that we are viewing the contents of a zip file in the current lister, and that a the present format can be changed under Prefs - Folders - Folder Formats, Default Formats list.[/ul]

Request:[ul] IMO, it would really help to have such a Folder Formats (Breadcrumbs) entry present in the Folder Options dialog as well. To help the user quickly understand what is up with his lister format, and to allow for quick editing access to the prefs.[/ul][/ul]

Sorry to be so long-winding, but every time I look into the matter of formats, after not doing so for a long time, I have no idea what exactly is going on in the listers. And the breadcrumb field types would really help make Opus much more transparent, IMO.

I don't know how difficult it would be for GPSoftware to add but I've wanted something like this for a while to help people understand which formats/styles/layouts are contributing to the format they see in the lister.

I'd also like the Folder Formats FAQ to be displayed the moment someone installs Opus, hehe. :slight_smile:

Glad you agree, I had the feeling I was going off the deep end here :wink:

"Color Picker to Open Editor" Key Combo

I noted a similar problem, when trying to find out "What color am I presently seeing in Opus, and where exactly can I change it".

It is possible to use Alt + Click to click on a Button or Toolbar, to quickly open up the appropriate Command Editor dialog, something like that for colors would really help IMO.