RE: dired listg & dired-sort-menu.el

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> What I'm really after is a way to have 2 things extra going on in the
> regular dired buffer.
>   1) hide dot files
>   2) sort directories first.
> 
> The menu on your pages on the wiki
>   http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DrewsEmacsDiredSortMenu
> show a menu with an item
>    "Dirs first   (W)"
> so that is what got me looking at that program.

That menu item is from dired-sort-menu+.el, which is an add-on to dired-sort-menu.el.  Both files are available on Emacs Wiki:

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/download/dired-sort-menu.el

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/download/dired-sort-menu%2b.el 

> I had already googled up code to hide dot files

Yes, Dired Omit is good for that. But `dired-omit-mode' is the supported name now, instead of `dired-omit-files-p'.  It is probably better to use this to turn it on, instead of just setting the mode variable:

(dired-omit-mode 1)

You can also toggle omit mode interactively, using `M-o'.

> and a setq to list dirs first

You don't need that if you use dired-sort-menu[+].el.

> but with them both in ~/.emacs the hiding dot files part gets canceled
> out... 

It shouldn't.

> so I was thinking maybe getting your program in there might
> solve that.
> 
> Getting back to subject.  I've posted three images, now that I broke
> out of the idiocy veil.
> 1) menu produced by S-Mouse-2
> 2) Menu produced by Menu / Immediate / Sort by
> 3) Menu posted on webpages.
> 
> You'll see that even though the first two pop up with a little
> different look, they seem to contain the same items.
> 
> Whereas, the menu from your wikipages (The bottom image), have two
> different items.... `Ignore Case' and `Dirs First'

See above - you need (require 'dired-sort-menu+)

>   www.jtan.com/~reader/vu1/disp.cgi
> (Should produce 3 stacked images in the order shown above)
> 
> But to repeat my reason for query... In my default dired view I want
> to have dot files hidden and Dirs sorted first... but be able to
> toggle dot files.

Should just work.  You toggle omit mode with `M-o'.

> Hide dot files
> (require 'dired-x)
> (setq-default dired-omit-files-p t)
> (setq dired-omit-files (concat dired-omit-files "\\|^\\..+$"))

OK.

> Sort directories first
> (setq dired-listing-switches "-lXGh --group-directories-first")

Not needed, but might also work (depending on your platform etc.), as an alternative to Dired Sort Menu.  (FWIW, it doesn't work for me, on Windows with Cygwin.)