RE: Emacs Explorer?

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

Not sure if you just wanted clarification or were being sarcastic.

Just in case it was the former: All I meant was that we could provide
headings to the various (ls, for now) columns in Dired, for 1) clarification
and 2) manipulation (sorting). If this is already the case for Emacs 21,
then ignore. For example:

Privileges Links User    Group   Size  Date Modified Name
---------- ----- ----    -----   ----  ------------- ----
-rw-r--r--    1  dradams svrtech 13525 Apr  6 08:45  shrink-fit.el

In Windows Explorer:
 . Privileges is called Attributes, and it is different from Unix file
privileges.
 . There are no Links or Group (or Inode etc.) `ls' columns.

More importantly, users should be able to click a column heading to sort by
that column (alternately ascending/descending) - just as in Windows
Explorer.

A folder forest needs to be given significant functionality. The WE version
offers quite a lot.

Windows Explorer is a good model to copy, in general, though Emacs could no
doubt do even better. We should at least *aim* at all you can do in WE.
There is a *lot* there to use as food for thought, including easy
customization (dragging columns around, swapping the folder forest for
search or other panels, various view modes, selection pop-up menus, etc. To
my mind, WE really is the best thing Windows has come up with.

 - Drew

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Stallman [mailto:rms@gnu.org]
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 3:54 PM
To: Drew Adams
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Emacs Explorer?


    5. We should add some of the handy-dandy Windows-Explorer features to
Dired.
    6. A folder forest a la tree-widget (but with drag & drop?) would be a
great
    start.

I like the idea of giving Dired both concise and expanded modes, a la
directory browsers.  Using tree-widget for each subdirectory might
be a good idea once tree-widget is in Emacs.

    8. We should add column headings to Dired.

Say what?