Important customization needed in Thunar

MajorLunaC · 2016-01-03 00:01:59

I've encountered Thunar over the years, but it's been missing the interactivity and settings I needed, so I just switched to other things like ROX. Now, ROX and PCMan File Manager (along with pretty much all of LXDE) have been pretty much abandoned, despite so many using them. So now it turns out only Thunar survives out of the better ones, so I'd like to request some important basic functionality improvements that I think are seriously needed. If any of these are already configurable already please tell me where and I'll change them.

1) Let there be an option to open a small menu open when dragging files from one directory to another, allowing you to choose Move or Copy. This is the absolute most important thing I've been missing. What I need to do with files varies, depending on the situation. Of course, it could also have an option to always move instead of showing the menu. But it needs to be an option. It shouldn't require any other keys than a drag and click, as it's done pretty often.

2) Let ~ , or even any customizable key, open a terminal in the current directory. I always run games and programs in a terminal so I can see what's going on. I've managed to get literally dozens of games working through Wine that were reported as non-working for others just because of having the terminal to see error outputs, among other programs. I do it often enough that a single key press is essential, rather than the multi-step right-click->Terminal. If people want to search, they should use Ctrl+F, not just start typing.

3) Let Right-clicking on the navigation arrows open a new window in the set direction. In order to move files from one directory to another, you need 2 DIFFERENT windows. So, in order to do that, you need to open a separate window quickly, preferably 1-click. I know the middle-click does that, but not all mice have a mouse wheel (certainly not laptop touch-pads); the button is finnicky, often clicking several times at once or not at all since some mice have the mouse wheel moving left and right slightly as separate buttons from middle-click; and also, mouse wheels break often, and overusing middle-click just speeds it up unnecessarily. There is no right-click interaction with the navigation keys anyway, so it really wont interfere with anything. It would speed things up most of the time, since most of the time it's moving extracted files to the appropriate directory elsewhere above that directory. That would take several more clicks and clumsy menu navigation to do, assuming no middle-click. Of course, it can be customized to do something else (can't imagine much else useful for that). I really dislike menus as you can easily miss when navigating at high (or even low) speed, and I have often accidentally deleted files with menus, which is why I removed the "Delete" option in ROX when I used it, replacing it with a "Recycle [Bin]" option. Speaking of which:

3.5) I very much need that as an option, to remove the "Delete" option and only have a "Trash" option in the Right-Click menu and wherever it may appear. It's too dangerous otherwise.

4) Let there be an option to turn OFF cursor-hover highlighting. This has really gotten in the way of navigation, by suddenly highlighting while I'm scrolling, dragging everything back up. It also poses an extreme risk when deleting things (or even recycling things). Say you try to select several different randomly placed files in a directory: You have to be very careful to not leave your cursor on any file too long or you'll select it too. Same thing happens when opening files, directories, or executables, which can actually be catastrophic (accidentally run an executable binary/script instead of opening a Readme).

5) Bit type needs to be included in the file info, even at the bottom, but most definitely in the file Properties. The "file" command can output much of the appropriate info already. This works Linux binaries and libraries, even Windows an Mac files! Why oh why would you not have this?

It may seem that I'm asking a lot, but it's essential for high-speed navigation and preventing VERY regrettable/catastrophic mistakes. If you don't plan on implementing all of these any time soon, at the very least, tell me where to change these things myself, as I'm learning C, and I have some friends I can ask to help me change the code as necessary if needed. And again, if there are any options available in config files that can do these, please tell me where and what to change.

Thank you for any regard on this matter.

Last edited by MajorLunaC (2016-01-03 00:02:29)

ToZ · 2016-01-03 02:11:18

Hello and welcome. A quick comment: although the Thunar developer occasionally drops by the forums, you might get more mileage by creating bug/enhancement requests at https://bugzilla.xfce.org/. Keep in mind that the Xfce development effort is currently being directed towards GTK3 migration, so the changes being requested may not be immediately addressed.

My comments are specific to Thunar 1.6.10 (YMMV with earlier versions).

1. If you right-button drag and drop, you will be presented with a menu that allows you to copy, move or link.

2. If you have the "Open in Terminal" custom action (or something similar), you can assign a keyboard shortcut key to it. To do so, first enable editable accelerators in Settings Manager > Appearance > Settings. Then, in Thunar, hover your mouse over the File>Open in Terminal menu item and press the keyboard combination that you would like to use for that action. Then when browsing in Thunar, use the keyboard combination to open a terminal window in your active directory.

3. Requires an enhancement.

3.5 Looks like its hard-coded. Requires an enhancement. See this post for info on how to remove the option from the Thunar source (if custom-patching and recompiling is an option).

4. I only have tooltips on the sidebar, not in the main Thunar window. What version are you using?

5. If by "bit type" you mean the UNIX permissions, you will probably need an enhancement request. They are displayed on the "Permissions" tab of the file properties (though not in the normal UNIX format), or you could create a custom action to display them. If however you mean base 2 vs base 10 calculations of file sizes, there is an option to toggle this in the Preferences dialog.

If you don't plan on implementing all of these any time soon, at the very least, tell me where to change these things myself, as I'm learning C, and I have some friends I can ask to help me change the code as necessary if needed.

There are a limited number of Xfce developers and they have set priorities of their own. Anyone providing patches will naturally be considered quicker. Worst case, you can patch and build Thunar for yourself with your custom changes. The Thunar git tree is located here.

The developers themselves can also be reached on the xfce4-dev mailing list or on the #xfce-dev IRC channel or the xfce4-dev mailing list.

MajorLunaC · 2016-01-03 03:55:30

1) Thank you so much! I'd prefer to switch the left-click and right-click functions there, so I'll see about trying to change that, but I can get used to it.

2) Very awesome! Thank you!

3) Will pursue it as mentioned, I'm just glad it's still in development. Although for now, I developed a workaround of assigning the key "1" to Open a new window (just like "." in directory navigation) and "2" to Up one level (just like ".." in directory navigation). This might actually be faster than clicking the arrows as they're still in a menu. Like I said, very awesome, so thank you!

3.5) Will pursue it as mentioned. I'm hoping I can compile properly in Mint, as I've encountered a few hitches in some programs recognizing some dependencies. I'll manage.

4) I don't mean the side-bar, I mean the files and directories themselves. Hovering the cursor over any file or directory for a second highlights/selects it. I've never seen this behavior before and it interferes with navigation and safe deletion. I always had to click while holding control or shift to select anything. I have Thunar 1.6.10 XFCE in the latest Linux Mint 64-bit "Rosa".

5) By bit type I meant 32-bit, 64-bit, etc. Since the "file" command seems to be included in multiple distros, I thought it would be convenient to use.

$ file libaoss.so 
libaoss.so: ELF 32-bit LSB  shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, BuildID[sha1]=50c67bdce54e1157127871e865543837e8ca175b, stripped

$ file Red\ Crucible.x86_64 
Red Crucible.x86_64: ELF 64-bit LSB  executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=0c616c1b7f026053ffed6831f208d404d051cc06, stripped

$ file AVP2.exe 
AVP2.exe: PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows

Thanks for all the answers, and responding extremely quickly.

MountainDewManiac · 2016-01-03 10:30:49

The numbers in my comments reference the original post:

1. The moving/copying in Thunar is one of the few things that always struck me as being somewhat FUBAR in comparison to the way Microsoft's file manager has done it (since Windows 3.x? IDK). I've been using linux daily for years, now (and Microsoft OS not at all unless trying to figure out something for someone else on their computer) - and I still find myself holding the CTRL key after selecting the files I wish to copy (instead of move) to another directory. When I do, I'll left-click-and-hold on one of the selected files in order to "grab the set"... and it unselects the file I choose!(!!!!!!!!!). For a while I wondered if Microsoft had patented the move files operation, lol, but have since begun to think that either the developer has never actually had to move multiple files from one local directory to another - or he/she is afflicted with "Not Invented Here Syndrome" and, therefore, won't do a thing the simple/intuitive/common-sense way because that's how someone else does it.

2. That "start typing and some unlabeled text box quietly and unobtrusively appears in the bottom corner of the screen" behavior drives me NUTS (more nuts, lol?)! I like the idea of requiring a CTRL-F first - mostly, because it means I wouldn't find myself cussing out Thunar three or four times per week. Even with forms on websites, where the user can select from drop-down lists, pressing "w" to get to the first choice that begins with a w works... and then pressing w again will skip to the next entry that begins with a w instead of opening a text box down in the corner that displays "ww", FFS! (For Fred's Sake wink . ) The least the developer could do is make the stupid thing about four inches tall, in the center of the screen, flashing, and cause an air-raid siren to play from the user's speakers at 112 dB so that he/she knows that the aberration has taken over and that he/she needs to press Escape / left-click on a file / attack the computer with an ax in order to cancel it.

3. By "two different windows," I am assuming that you mean "two different tabs," since Thunar has had tabs for quite some time. But, anyway, you mentioned mousepads on laptops not having a middle button. I use a laptop and I often want a "middle-click" when using Firefox, because that action on a link will open it in a separate tab. I learned some time ago that pressing both laptop mouse buttons at the same time performed a "middle-click." I spent about two minutes trying to become proficient at doing this with two fingers, lol - but then I realized that all I had to do was press the "middle" (the point where the two buttons almost touch) with one finger. I do not know if doing this in Thunar mimics button-3, because I have not tried it. I thought maybe it was something that was configurable via the "Mouse and Touchpad" settings, but just checked and did not see the option. Perhaps it is just a standard thing that works everywhere in linux? (Why would anyone want the ability to press both laptop mouse buttons at the same time and NOT want the input to be accepted as a middle-button?) Or maybe it's one of those things that only the developer of Firefox and people with common-sense can envision, IDK. If the latter... Perhaps it'd be something that {whoever develops the aforementioned Mouse and Touchpad dialog/app/settings} would be willing to add as a configurable option (or just make it a permanent across-the-board thing)? IDK about actual physical mice; I have a Logitech cordless mouse, but more often than not I'll forget that it's sitting beside the computer (and I've forgotten to turn the thing off for over a year, IIRC - it must be both incredibly power-efficient and have a well-designed sleep mode, because I've not had to change the single AA battery in it since I got it 2+ years ago). And I have never experienced a scroll-wheel breaking on a mouse (although I've thought about, err, manually breaking one a time or two) - but I agree that the things are a RPitA. It serves duty as a scroll-wheel and THREE buttons and I've always had a great deal of difficulty getting a middle-click out of one without moving the scroll-wheel, at least consistently. I used to have a Microsoft mouse (hate their OS but loved that mouse) that, in addition to all that, also had a sixth and seventh button (one on each side of the mouse instead of piling more stuff on top of it) and they worked GREAT - no way to accidentally press button four / button five / move the scroll-wheel / through it through the nearest window in a fit of rage when you pressed one of those side buttons lol . But it was a corded mouse, so I gave it away when I got my first cordless mouse because, well, I can be stupid at times, I guess.

3½. I've never used the "trash" function(?) because it doesn't actually delete anything, so it's sort of pointless to me, but I do know that I can press Shift-Delete when I have (a) file(s) highlighted and Thunar will delete it/them. Perhaps there is likewise a keyboard command for moving files to the trash directory? If so, that might be a viable option for those who lack sufficient hand-eye coordination to place the mouse cursor on the correct choice in the context menu (or have Parkinson's disease, I suppose).

4. I have never experienced this behavior. I just selected three random files, hovered my mouse cursor over a fourth, and waited... and waited... and waited... 28 seconds later (I got bored and stopped watching), Thunar still hadn't either selected that forth file in addition to the three I had chosen or instead of them. I confess that I am not using the newest version of Thunar; I have it on another partition (along with the rest of Xfce 4.12), but keep forgetting about that version of my distro, lol. If that is standard behavior in the new version, I won't be using it in the future, either (and assume that lots and lots of people will make the same decision if/when they experience this behavior roll )... So much so that when this version of my distro becomes unsupported, I'll have to switch to Debian so that I get stuck on an old version of Xfce for years, lol. However... The "automatic selecting" behavior that you describe seems (to me) to be something that someone with physical disabilities might (grudgingly) use if they have no fingers (or something?), so maybe it's not so much a Thunar thing - maybe it's one of those Accessibility features? Have you tried looking in that section of the Xfce settings menu to see if it's a configurable option? Have you tried placing a file/folder on your desktop (I know, I know, placing cr@p on one's desktop looks awful and covers the background image, but for testing purposes...) and hovering your mouse cursor on that in order to see if this "automatic psychotic selecting of files" behavior is system-wide?

5. I confess that I don't know - or care - whether something is 32-bit, 64-bit, or two-bitts, lol. My OS is 64-bit but I haven't gotten one of those trademarked Microsoft Blue Screens of Death, made smoke pour out of the vents, or caused the needle to skip on the record by running a 32-bit application. I was under the impression that 64-bit linux can run 32-bit apps. Maybe I am completely wrong here and, instead, the developer of my distro (Mint) has removed all 32-bit files from its repos. <SCRATCHES HEAD> But I have added "a few" PPAs to my sources list and have never paid any attention to the, err, bitness of the files contained in them, so I'd be surprised if I don't have something-or-other in 32-bit form. Regardless, maybe - since you showed that there is a terminal command that outputs such information - you can add a custom action to Thunar which will call that terminal command for you?

I like Thunar well enough (and certainly do not dislike it enough to use an alternate). But I, too, wish it had a couple more features and a little less insanity. One thing I have missed since the GNOME 2.x days (when I used Nautilus) is being able to hover my mouse cursor over an audio file and have it start playing the file and continue to do so unless/until I moved the mouse cursor off of that file. I know that I can double-left-click on one and have it run a media player, but that seems, IDK... Not as bad as blowing up one's garage in order to kill a fly in it, lol, but something I'd rather not have to do. When I first got... Not my first computer back in ~1981, but the first computer that had actual music-playing ability, I digitized my music collection (which began back around 1974 when my older brother gave me my first album). I have LOTS of audio files. So many that, occasionally, I find myself wondering if the song is the one I think it is when I'm grabbing a bunch of them to throw on my cell phone's memory card, and it'd be convenient if I could quickly "hover, hear, move to a different file, hover, hear, rinse, lather, repeat" a couple hundred songs without having to bring external applications into it. <SHRUGS>

In addition to the area on Bugzilla that ToZ mentioned - which is the proper place for feature requests and such - there is a developer email list. And it's not private; anyone can join. It might be helpful if you did so and began a discussion with the developer of Thunar (and, possibly the developers of the Mouse and Touchpad and Accessibility ones, too (see my above comments) about some of the things you have discussed, whether or not you'd be willing to write patches (or, at least, do some serious testing if you cannot code and someone else was willing to do so), some opinions about things, et cetera. I have largely remained "silent" because, well... I was raised to tell someone if their decision/action/etc. is pointless / stupid / needlessly complicated / insane, and I've never figured out how to tell someone that in a way that they didn't take offense to. I mean... IDK, lol, if I see someone about to step into a 30'-deep hole, my first impulse isn't to quietly say, "Err, excuse me. Sir (Madam)? I believe that, while you may know exactly what you are about to do - and if so, that is, of course, not only your own affair but fine with me - but I believe that it might be possible that, perhaps, you could, maybe, be slightly less than completely aware that you are about to do something that some people might consider less than completely advisable, not that it's my place to judge and I'm sure that you have your reasons, but just perhaps... You might like to step two paces to your left - or, if you would rather, three paces to your right - before taking one more step? If you want to, I mean?" No, I'm just going to tackle their absent-minded self before they fall in. If, afterwards, it turns out that they were fully cognizant of the hole's existence and, in fact, actually wanted to fall into the nether regions of the planet, well... I can always kick them in lol . (Pop didn't call people stupid - but if he saw someone doing something that was stupid, he wasn't shy about letting them know.)

Rambling,
MDM

ToZ · 2016-01-03 14:12:01

MajorLunaC wrote:

4) I don't mean the side-bar, I mean the files and directories themselves. Hovering the cursor over any file or directory for a second highlights/selects it. I've never seen this behavior before and it interferes with navigation and safe deletion. I always had to click while holding control or shift to select anything. I have Thunar 1.6.10 XFCE in the latest Linux Mint 64-bit "Rosa".

Ok, I think I know what is happening. You have "Single click to activate items" enabled. There is a setting in the Preferences on the Behaviour tab that allows you to disable the auto-selecting of the item when hovering over it.

5) By bit type I meant 32-bit, 64-bit, etc. Since the "file" command seems to be included in multiple distros, I thought it would be convenient to use.

$ file libaoss.so 
libaoss.so: ELF 32-bit LSB  shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, BuildID[sha1]=50c67bdce54e1157127871e865543837e8ca175b, stripped

$ file Red\ Crucible.x86_64 
Red Crucible.x86_64: ELF 64-bit LSB  executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=0c616c1b7f026053ffed6831f208d404d051cc06, stripped

$ file AVP2.exe 
AVP2.exe: PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows

I see. This will also require an enhancement then if you wish for this information to be displayed in the status bar. You can. however, create a custom action to display this information:
- Name = File Information
- Comment = Get file information
- Command = file %f | sed -e 's/[:,]/\n/g' | zenity --text-info --title="File Information"
- Icon = choose one
- Appearance Conditions = select all but directories

MajorLunaC · 2016-01-03 23:14:51

I can't believe I missed the highlighting option! I guess it looked just like the time between double-clicks in one of the other file managers so I ignored it. Thanks!

ToZ wrote:

I see. This will also require an enhancement then if you wish for this information to be displayed in the status bar. You can. however, create a custom action to display this information:
- Name = File Information
- Comment = Get file information
- Command = file %f | sed -e 's/[:,]/\n/g' | zenity --text-info --title="File Information"
- Icon = choose one
- Appearance Conditions = select all but directories
http://en.zimagez.com/miniature/fileinfo.png

That command messes up the last modified time on some files like .tgz (10:15:30), so this one works better (changes first : to , ):

- Command = file -F , %f | sed -e 's/[,]/\n/g' | zenity --text-info --title="File Information"

Thanks again, a lot! Solved so many problems! smile

P.S. Does Thunar log anything on crashes? All instances crashed at one point but I can't seem to find a log. I wasn't doing anything specific.

Last edited by MajorLunaC (2016-01-03 23:19:08)

ToZ · 2016-01-04 01:33:55

MajorLunaC wrote:

P.S. Does Thunar log anything on crashes? All instances crashed at one point but I can't seem to find a log. I wasn't doing anything specific.

If your distro logs X errors to an ~/.xsession-errors file, then you should find something there. Later versions of Xubuntu seem to log to ~/.cache/upstart/startxfce4.log (I think Mint is based on Xubuntu). There might also be a Thunar crash file in that directory (not sure).

MajorLunaC · 2016-01-04 06:15:08

Yeah, xsession-errors has nothing on it, maybe because I shut it down since. ~/.cache/upstart/startxfce4.log only mentions something vague-ish. The only thing I remember doing right then was going up one directory, or opening a new window and quickly going up one directory. Is it even worth a bug report on something so vague?

Vector smash protection is enabled.
add_categories took 87.502 ms
build_matched_packages took 0.105 ms
add_packages took 1647.072 ms
add_reviews took 649.135 ms
__init__ took 5394.153 ms
show_category took 345.424 ms
Overwriting reviews file in /root/.linuxmint/mintinstall/reviews.list
update_reviews took 279.177 ms
show_search_results took 720.560 ms
show_search_results took 166.951 ms
show_search_results took 650.846 ms
show_package took 133.406 ms
_on_package_load_finished took 0.913 ms
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintInstall/widgets/searchentry.py:126: Warning: Source ID 1624 was not found when attempting to remove it
  gobject.source_remove(self._timeout_id)
/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintInstall/widgets/searchentry.py:126: Warning: Source ID 1734 was not found when attempting to remove it
  gobject.source_remove(self._timeout_id)
Killed

(Thunar:2232): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(Thunar:2232): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(Thunar:2232): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'object->ref_count > 0' failed

(Thunar:2232): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
MPlayer2 2.0-701-gd4c5b7f-2ubuntu2 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team
Terminal type `unknown' is not defined.

ToZ · 2016-01-04 11:11:31

MajorLunaC wrote:

Is it even worth a bug report on something so vague?

Probably not - unless you can replicate the issue on demand.

Xfce Forum

Sub domains

#1 2016-01-03 00:01:59

Important customization needed in Thunar

#2 2016-01-03 02:11:18

Re: Important customization needed in Thunar

#3 2016-01-03 03:55:30

Re: Important customization needed in Thunar

#4 2016-01-03 10:30:49

Re: Important customization needed in Thunar

#5 2016-01-03 14:12:01

Re: Important customization needed in Thunar

#6 2016-01-03 23:14:51

Re: Important customization needed in Thunar

#7 2016-01-04 01:33:55

Re: Important customization needed in Thunar

#8 2016-01-04 06:15:08

Re: Important customization needed in Thunar

#9 2016-01-04 11:11:31

Re: Important customization needed in Thunar

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