maechler@CRYPTO.BELLCORE.COM (Martin Maechler) (02/23/91)
I asked a very similar question about a month ago.
I got several answers.
The first being from Chris Ward, I started to use his stuff.
--- ---
and also got annoyed, as you did.
I am convinced that we don't want anything which is not
upward compatible.
The "final" answer came a bit later, actually, on gnu.emacs.help AND
....sources:
It is Sebastian Kremer's dired-extensions.
He also got some emacs-19 code from rms (Richard Stallman) in order to make
the thing more or less fit to be built into emacs-19.
I allow to reproduce (most) of his posting, since I really think it is
great what he offers.
----------------- BEGIN citation --------------------------------------
From: sk@thp.uni-koeln.de (Sebastian Kremer)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.sources
Subject: Tree Dired available
Date: 28 Jan 91 14:30:17 GMT
~~~~~~~~~ ONLY 3 WEEKS AGO !!
Since Chris Ward <cward@mordor.dseg.ti.com> has just posted his
enhanced Dired and Martin Maechler <maechler@breeze.bellcore.com> had
enquired (in gnu.emacs.bug) about future Dired plans for the next
Emacs release, I'd like to mention that I am currently beta-testing a
new version of dired.
[[ This now "out" for a while: since Feb.5 ]]
I have already given copyright of this in writing to the FSF.
Probably RMS will include it in the next Emacs release.
Features are:
* Tree Dired (ls -lR allowed and insertion of subdirectories in
situ - just type `i' on a directory line to expand it into the
current buffer).
Commands to hide some or all subdirectories, leaving only their
header lines (like outline mode).
Moving commands to traverse the tree, to quickly go to the next
file that is a directory or to a specific file by name.
* marking of files for later commands (all dired commands work on
lists of marked files or the next prefix ARG files and default
to the current file, so this is fully backward compatible.)
* arbitrary shell commands on files, optionally in the background
* renaming by regexp (with \<n> and \& allowed like in replace-regexp)
* marking by regexp
* marking by file type (directory/symlink/executable) in addition
to the usual marking of backup or auto-save files
* diffing files
* sorting on name or date
* copy/move of single or marked files into a directory
* spaces in filenames allowed
* `F', `i' and `s' in dired-listing-switches allowed
* and many little enhancements/fixes.
It also works much better with ange-ftp. In fact, there is hardly any
difference between local and remote directories in Dired now.
[ange-ftp is an Emacs lisp package that makes Emacs work with remote
files using ftp. It uses a filename syntax like rcp:
/user@host:/absolute/path or /user@host:relative/to/your/home/dir.
A recent version of ange-ftp.el is included in dired-ange.shar.]
I have been watching discussions about Dired in the Emacs-related
newsgroups and think all features that were being discussed are
present in my dired. All bugs that were mentioned are fixed or have
vanished due to the major rewrite.
The major difference between this version of dired and others is that
it is possible to have a whole directory tree (or part of it) in one
Dired buffer. You can either add `R' to your listing switches or
include directories one by one by typing `i' on them as you go along.
>>> Unlike Monkey Mode, this is fully backward compatible to standard
>>> Dired: a naive Dired user should have no problems in using Tree Dired.
Dired buffers know about each other, so that moving or copying files
around updates all concerned Dired buffers (and file buffers if a
visited file is renamed).
A version of my dired is available for anonymous ftp from
ftp.cs.buffalo.edu:pub/Emacs/
dired.shar Required (100k)
dired-extra.shar Optional extra features (20k)
dired-ange.shar Optional ange-ftp support (70k)
dired-txt discussions from the beta tester list (40k)
diredall.tar.Z All of the above (90k)
"Extra" Dired features include minibuffer history for dired shell
commands (including my gmhist - generic minibuffer history - package,
which I will re-post soon), VM or RMAIL on folder, and dynamic marker
characters. Release 5.15 also can selectively omit files (such as
backup, object and other uninteresting files) from the listing.
--
Sebastian Kremer <sk@thp.Uni-Koeln.DE>
Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, F. R. of Germany
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Martin Maechler, Bellcore 2M-343, 445 South St., Morristown, NJ 07962-1910, USA
maechler@bellcore.com, Tel: (201) 829-4837(w) 933-0944(h), Fax (201) 538-9093.