One of the defining characteristics of an outliner is the ability to rearrange items in a tree hierarchy very quickly using keyboard shortcuts. For example, Ctrl+arrow keys to Move the item Up/Down/Left/Right, Enter key to create a new item at the same level.

Then I thought, why couldn't a file manager work the same way? Now Ctrl+arrow keys would be used to move selected files/folders to be a under a different folder. Pressing Enter would create a new folder at the same level. Perhaps there could be a different shortcut could be used to create a new text file at the same level as the currently focused item.

I think this might be more efficient than the existing methods of select, Ctrl+X/C, navigate, Ctrl+V, navigate.

Also, the concept of ordinal position of items within a folder could be introduced to items in the file system. That is, the items (files/subfolders) within a folder would be manually arranged in a certain sequence, perhaps represented by a number. This ordering could be altered by the Ctrl+Up/Down keys. Sort commands could be used to change this ordering - the items could be resorted by different properties (e.g. filename ascending). Ideally, this ordering could be a persistent property of the folders/files - not just something done "on the fly" when we ask a file manager to display items in a certain sort order.

Perhaps there is a file manager out there that already works this way? Or at least partially - I don't imagine there's a filesystem out there that incorporates the persistent ordering concept I described.

Just to elaborate one point. In the file managers I've seen, the "tree" pane shows only the hierarchy of folders - files are NOT shown in the tree. With my idea, files would also be shown in the tree. And moving the files would be a matter done by Ctrl+arrow keys in the hierarchy to the new desired location under and to the right of the parent folder. Also, now that I think of it, when such a move is completed, the user would have to be prompted to select whether the operation is a Move or a Copy.

There was one research project that worked exactly like what you're describing. It was called Project Planner... scroll down for more info here: https://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/projectdetail.htm#p_planner I'm not sure if it's still available for download, what the status is, or what the relationship is with another related research project called "Planz".

Hi Jim,

Would a combination of macOS-like Finder (Miller columns file explorer) + the ability to also see files in the folder tree be good for you ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHwX25AO4uk

Pierre
IQ Designer
http://www.infoqube.biz

that's awesome, Chris! thanks so much for your reply. I am going to study that Project Planner closely. I'll see if I can interest the xplorer2 developer in developing an "outliner mode". If only to plant the seed in his head.

What kind of got me thinking of this idea is my use of the Linkman bookmark manager. It seems Bookmark Managers frequently incorporate the feature of a persistent manual ordering of items within a folder. But I just checked out Linkman, Chrome, and Firefox bookmark managers, and it seems this ordering can be accomplished only by drag and drop. No Move/Up/Left/Right options appear in the item context menus, and I assume there is no keyboard shortcut (I might be wrong). I use a Chrome Extension called Tabs Outliner that does have keyboard shortcuts for Move Up/Down/Left/Right.

Hi Pierre, thanks for your reply. I've always thought Miller Columns are very cool ... I need to think about how well they'd work for me, you know I'm a very keyboard-intensive guy! I visited the Exontrol website and also googled to see if there is a windows file manager that uses Miller columns, and this one called bitCommander now renamed to One Commander was at the top of the search results. It looks impressive.

http://bit-commander.com/#

I should have posted the link to the successor website -

http://onecommander.com/

Blog indicates development is ongoing.

http://onecommander.com/blog/

jimspoon wrote:

I've always thought Miller Columns are very cool

You may want to check this out as well:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/thatfile/9p5nkmfzp3h1?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

This is one way I use Devonthink. Individual groups (folders) can be set to manual search order.

Unfortunately, when you view a tag, you can sort them in various ways, but not manually. I haven't found that limiting, though - but I wish the feature were there.

I haven't looked much at DT 3, so maybe that's coming.

jimspoon wrote:

One of the defining characteristics of an outliner is the ability to
rearrange items in a tree hierarchy very quickly using keyboard
shortcuts. For example, Ctrl+arrow keys to Move the item
Up/Down/Left/Right, Enter key to create a new item at the same level.

Then I thought, why couldn't a file manager work the same way? Now
Ctrl+arrow keys would be used to move selected files/folders to be a
under a different folder. Pressing Enter would create a new folder at
the same level. Perhaps there could be a different shortcut could be
used to create a new text file at the same level as the currently
focused item.

I think this might be more efficient than the existing methods of
select, Ctrl+X/C, navigate, Ctrl+V, navigate.

Also, the concept of ordinal position of items within a folder could be
introduced to items in the file system. That is, the items
(files/subfolders) within a folder would be manually arranged in a
certain sequence, perhaps represented by a number. This ordering could
be altered by the Ctrl+Up/Down keys. Sort commands could be used to
change this ordering - the items could be resorted by different
properties (e.g. filename ascending). Ideally, this ordering could be a
persistent property of the folders/files - not just something done "on
the fly" when we ask a file manager to display items in a certain sort
order.

Perhaps there is a file manager out there that already works this way?
Or at least partially - I don't imagine there's a filesystem out there
that incorporates the persistent ordering concept I described.

Maybe I'm too used to Windows Explorer, quirks and all, but I find the OneCommander window to be strangely difficult to navigate and figure out.

I wanted the same thing! And requested this feature on dopus forum

https://resource.dopus.com/t/feature-suggestion-outliner-view/31131

Not sure if they are gonna implement it though. But I did mention WizTree in that post which might be one more option you could check out



jimspoon wrote:

One of the defining characteristics of an outliner is the ability to
rearrange items in a tree hierarchy very quickly using keyboard
shortcuts. For example, Ctrl+arrow keys to Move the item
Up/Down/Left/Right, Enter key to create a new item at the same level.

Then I thought, why couldn't a file manager work the same way? Now
Ctrl+arrow keys would be used to move selected files/folders to be a
under a different folder. Pressing Enter would create a new folder at
the same level. Perhaps there could be a different shortcut could be
used to create a new text file at the same level as the currently
focused item.

I think this might be more efficient than the existing methods of
select, Ctrl+X/C, navigate, Ctrl+V, navigate.

Also, the concept of ordinal position of items within a folder could be
introduced to items in the file system. That is, the items
(files/subfolders) within a folder would be manually arranged in a
certain sequence, perhaps represented by a number. This ordering could
be altered by the Ctrl+Up/Down keys. Sort commands could be used to
change this ordering - the items could be resorted by different
properties (e.g. filename ascending). Ideally, this ordering could be a
persistent property of the folders/files - not just something done "on
the fly" when we ask a file manager to display items in a certain sort
order.

Perhaps there is a file manager out there that already works this way?
Or at least partially - I don't imagine there's a filesystem out there
that incorporates the persistent ordering concept I described.

Actually the feature request above from dopus is part of many gui kits including Windows own (pop-up dialog boxes to set location for whatever). They wouldn't even have to code much, just plug it in as a pane. As shown space analyzers, driver finders, location setters etc do.

The OP had a thread a few days ago with 2 requests. 1) whose essence was ignored by others and himself later on was: to pull in multi txt files into a single big txt file editor. That's ok. But he wanted the changes in editor to be reflected back in all constituent little txt files. I explained this will never happen. Why? Because you need invisible borders for each little file in the big file. OK!?!! But as I explained this is illogical as bits & chunks can get inter mingled and inter woven. Then what is written back to each little file? As they are interwoven by re-edits? Where do you put the invisible borders between little files in the big file & write what back to each little file? Of course, completely illogical, no reply given nor even acknowledgement so my reluctance to post even here.

The 2nd request there was similar to this thread which has added further to that. I've tested dozens of apps in this genre and use about 5 regularly, for different purposes. It in essence wanted a preview of those little txt files (yep they're back). As I said there I myself have lots of them in my process. So I use quick preview, as he needs, myself regularly. I use an app to break large note files by whatever delimiter I set, into lots of little txt files. Then I use quick preview in other file manager apps.

The other essential part of his request, jist of this thread, was to have keyboard shortcuts for most uses, switching panes & showing files/ folders quickly etc etc by keyboard. I myself use keyboard shortcuts in most regular apps. Anyone who has coded expertly and fast or seen one in action knows what I mean. I asked him for what platform he wanted one, Windows Mac or Linux? Again no reply came. This thread has gone into Miller columns which is ok by me. Usually I despise off topic divergences, but when it comes to Millers'? Thanks to those respondents who mentioned it. I just love Millers. :)

https://www.outlinersoftware.com/search/index/Miller+columns

The thing is that putting everything on the tree can lead to overpopulation very soon. This is something two-pane outliners often face with information items, let alone file system folders which may easily hold hundreds of files.

In information outliners, the issue can partly be resolved by allowing infinite hierarchy, which encourages item grouping, thus reducing the average number of items per level/group. However, the file system has limitations in the maximum path length (at least Windows does, don't others?) so, by definition, a tree which copies the file folder structure will as well; thus, infinite hierarchy would not be possible in such a case.

SmallDog wrote:

I wanted the same thing! And requested this feature on dopus forum
https://resource.dopus.com/t/feature-suggestion-outliner-view/31131

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

The thing is that putting everything on the tree can lead to overpopulation very soon.

Indeed. In the sample video I linked to, files can be shown under the folder OR in a separate column. This flexibility is quite uncommon

Pierre

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

The thing is that putting everything on the tree can lead to
overpopulation very soon. This is something two-pane outliners often
face with information items, let alone file system folders which may
easily hold hundreds of files.

In information outliners, the issue can partly be resolved by allowing
infinite hierarchy, which encourages item grouping, thus reducing the
average number of items per level/group. However, the file system has
limitations in the maximum path length (at least Windows does, don't
others?) so, by definition, a tree which copies the file folder
structure will as well; thus, infinite hierarchy would not be possible
in such a case.

Very true! Pierre mentions a good solution where the display of files under the folders can be toggled on/off.

Trying to understand your point about the infinite hierarchy and maximum path length. (Nice thing there, is that I think there's a registry setting in Windows for increasing the maximum path length from 256 characters to something like 32K !!) I guess in the case of outliners, when you're traversing an infinite hierarchy of subitems, you're actually just displaying other items that don't actually "exist" at the displayed locations, but "really" exist at another location. Maybe similar concepts could be employed in "outliner-type" file copy/move operations. Seems like it would be possible for such a file manager to alert you when a copy operation would create path lengths exceeding the maximum. In most cases, however, the max length limitation would not come into play.

SmallDog wrote:

I wanted the same thing! And requested this feature on dopus forum

https://resource.dopus.com/t/feature-suggestion-outliner-view/31131

Not sure if they are gonna implement it though. But I did mention
WizTree in that post which might be one more option you could check out

Thanks, SmallDog! I'm looking at your dopus forum post now! Great screenshot !!

washere wrote:

The OP had a thread a few days ago with 2 requests. 1) whose essence was
ignored by others and himself later on was: to pull in multi txt files
into a single big txt file editor. That's ok. But he wanted the changes
in editor to be reflected back in all constituent little txt files. I
explained this will never happen. Why? Because you need invisible
borders for each little file in the big file. OK!?!! But as I explained
this is illogical as bits & chunks can get inter mingled and inter
woven. Then what is written back to each little file? As they are
interwoven by re-edits? Where do you put the invisible borders between
little files in the big file & write what back to each little file? Of
course, completely illogical, no reply given nor even acknowledgement so
my reluctance to post even here.

I've replied in that thread, I don't see how my suggestion was illogical.

The 2nd request there was similar to this thread which has added further
to that. I've tested dozens of apps in this genre and use about 5
regularly, for different purposes. It in essence wanted a preview of
those little txt files (yep they're back). As I said there I myself have
lots of them in my process. So I use quick preview, as he needs, myself
regularly. I use an app to break large note files by whatever delimiter
I set, into lots of little txt files. Then I use quick preview in other
file manager apps.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I was specifically looking for a preview pane that was also an editor. I also use a number of apps with viewer panes.

The other essential part of his request, jist of this thread, was to
have keyboard shortcuts for most uses, switching panes & showing files/
folders quickly etc etc by keyboard. I myself use keyboard shortcuts in
most regular apps. Anyone who has coded expertly and fast or seen one in
action knows what I mean. I asked him for what platform he wanted one,
Windows Mac or Linux? Again no reply came.

Windows.

This thread has gone into
Miller columns which is ok by me. Usually I despise off topic
divergences,

SmallDog wrote:

I wanted the same thing! And requested this feature on dopus forum

https://resource.dopus.com/t/feature-suggestion-outliner-view/31131

Not sure if they are gonna implement it though. But I did mention
WizTree in that post which might be one more option you could check out

Wow, that was a great post SmallDog. And one thing that surprised me was that you said that "dopus already has 'manual positioning'" - I have not seen that before. And I wonder how it is implemented, since I don't think there is any support for that in the underlying filesystem. Seems like Dopus would have to maintain the "ordering data" itself, in its own datastore.

I should clarify the use case I have particularly in mind. Often I have a bunch of uncategorized files in a folder, awaiting further categorization. And what I have in mind is creating first-level subfolders under that folder, and quickly placing the files into an appropriate first-level subfolder. It seems that the "outliner-mode" would be ideal for that. But perhaps not nearly so good as rearranging files in many widely-dispersed locations in the overall filesystem tree.

jimspoon wrote:
I've replied in that thread, I don't see how my suggestion was
illogical.

The impossible part of the request was live linking and updating the constituent small txt files as they can be interwoven. No AI rule based Expert System can decide because there is no logic to this, which bit goes to which file as many edits happen.

This was explained twice, your reply did not address this.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I was specifically looking for a
preview pane that was also an editor. I also use a number of apps with
viewer panes.

Yes there are two genres possible, editors and file managers, some have a bit of the other too. I only preview subfolders with many txt files in the file managers, not heavy editing & outline structuring.

YMMV, good luck.

washere wrote:

The impossible part of the request was live linking and updating the
constituent small txt files as they can be interwoven. No AI rule based
Expert System can decide because there is no logic to this, which bit
goes to which file as many edits happen.

This was explained twice, your reply did not address this.

I don't understand what you mean by "interwoven". If you move or copy text between the demarcations which mark the boundary between one file and another, and then are able to save each demarcated section to its respective source file, then I think I have what I'm looking for. And that part does not seem to be "impossible", if I am correctly reading the help text for Depeche View, which I quoted already:

http://stahlworks.com/dev/doc/dviewhelp.html#Chapter_9_Pro_The_Integrated_Text_Editor

“While editing text, as soon as you typed in text changes,
you see two buttons at the right top, “Save” and “Revert”.

- when you click on “Save”, all changes of all edited files
are saved to disk, and all open editors are closed
(DView goes back to search mode).”

Yes there are two genres possible, editors and file managers, some have
a bit of the other too. I only preview subfolders with many txt files in
the file managers, not heavy editing & outline structuring.

YMMV, good luck.

I understand that there are editors and file managers. I frequently use my file manager, Xplorer2, to view text files in the viewer pane. However, from that pane, I am unable to put that pane in an edit mode, so that I could make some quick changes, and then tab or return to the "file list" pane, with the quick edits I made to the text file being preserved. Doesn't seem too unreasonable.

jimspoon wrote:

On the first, editor, live linking preserved to little files in the big combo file:

Lets say each chunk of paragraph(s) is an external live linked file: what if you move bits from each? or cut and paste to interweave chunks? or delete one? or cut it and paste it somewhere else and re-edit it too? etc etc. All normal in word processing large files over a period. If you intend to keep each chunk of file rigidly in place, then that is something else, not totally free editing, but very limited ordered editing of predefined chunks in pre-defined areas. Very unusual. If you don't see what I mean and/or are already happy with what you got wrt predefined editing scopes, then lets forget it, it's taken enough time.


On the Second, file manager:

I have tested many, kept about a dozen, diff uses for each.
For kybrd shrtcts try Tablacus, has many addons. Bit of a learning curve. Best overall file manager.

For preview I asked another dev to do what you want last year for txt files, but he still has not done it, preview is only for images, it is called Q-Dir. Like Tablacus, it has multi layouts 2 panes, 4 etc + tree column. Both are free. Setting up preview is rule based, complex, useless for you as it is still only images.

WinNC, not free, gives 4 panes etc too, the txt preview (ALT+F3) is not editable, pops up in a pane below the top two in 4 pane view. BUT you can press F4 to popup an editor. And if you are a coder, hence the penchant for kybrd shrtcts, you can use them ie: shrtcts to F4 or save or close etc.

However you are better off with a top notch editor. If it was last year I would say Atom (free). This year I would say MS Visual Studio CODE (also free) has become number one. Even above Sublime Text.

The trick with MS VS Code, and Atom or Sublime, is to plugin the right file manager extensions as one or two left tree columns. Then by using keyboard shortcuts, you can browse folders/subs and files and the preview is updated in the editor panel or panels, on the right. I have at least two editor panes to the right of the file tree columns. Of course MS VS Code has thousands of plugins/addons, called extensions. Find the right file manager / tree columns for you, there are many. Search by keyword in extensions: file tree folder subfolder etc.

Stick a nice dark theme on it and maybe in time use some of the Markdown extensions which work with txt too, plus preview etc. In a couple of years you'll see you can do anything an ideal file maanger could do with it, plus much much more. Good luck.

thanks for your suggestions.