Patches item #3296739, was opened at 2011-05-03 10:44 Message generated for change (Comment added) made by zmoelnig You can respond by visiting: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=478072&aid=3296739...

Please note that this message will contain a full copy of the comment thread, including the initial issue submission, for this request, not just the latest update. Category: puredata Group: bugfix Status: Open Resolution: None Priority: 5 Private: No Submitted By: IOhannes m zmölnig (zmoelnig)

Assigned to: Miller Puckette (millerpuckette)

Summary: make helpbrowser separate directories and patches

Initial Comment: starting Pd(0.43) with custom search paths (e.g. "-path /path/to/Gem), results in a not-so-nice help-browser experience: basically the left column (the one that is crucial for navigating the various directories) is filled with all help-patches found in all search-paths, sorted alphabetically (so directories are lost somewhere between files), and upper-case before lower-case.

if a search-path is a child of another search path (e.g. /usr/lib/pd/extra/Gem is child of /usr/lib/pd), then both the directory ("Gem/") and it's content (too many to list here) are listed, making the information accessible several times (adding more confusion)

i don't know exactly where to fix the problem, but a simple solution would be to only allow directories on the left side (and add an entry for "<searchpaths>" (probably an entry for "all searchpaths" and separate entries for each searchpath), rather than throwing everything together.

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Comment By: IOhannes m zmölnig (zmoelnig)

Date: 2011-05-04 19:13

Message: you are right that the problem first occured to me when dealing with Gem; however there is nothing Gem specific to it. however, i don't know why this makes the patch pre-mature.

as for sorting files and directories: here on xfce4, the Pd filebrowser will sort directories before files. however, i don't see how this would matter, as the helpbrowser does not behave like an ordinary file browser on most systems anyhow; e.g. the "Pure-data" and "-------" entries are quite uncommon.

i'm only suggesting to add "sections" for the various libraries/libdirs before displaying all the help-patches.

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Comment By: Hans-Christoph Steiner (eighthave) Date: 2011-05-04 18:32

Message: I'm guessing this is related to your problem with the Gem abstractions showing up in the root of the help browser. I think the problem is elsewhere since its not happening with gridflow or other Gem builds, so this patch is pre-mature. As for the relative merits of sorting files and directories, that is a bigger, more annoying question. Windows sorts directories at the top then files after, other OS file browsers that I have seen (mostly GNOME and Mac OS X) sort files and dirs together. Therefore, I think this patch would only make sense if that behavior was Windows only.

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Comment By: IOhannes m zmölnig (zmoelnig) Date: 2011-05-03 10:47

Message: an alternative is to separate directories from files in the root-column, rather than mixing them together, which makes the browser somewhat navigable (and was way easier to implement :-))

see attached patch.

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You can respond by visiting: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=478072&aid=3296739...