ralphm@elaine22.stanford.edu (Ralph Melton) (12/11/90)
I'd like an item in the Edit menu, just above "Select All", that says "Select Pattern." You'd select this menu item, specify a wild-card pattern somehow, and then it would select all the files in the current folder that had names matching the pattern. So in one fell swoop, for instance, you could select all the files in a folder called "Backup of *" and drag them to the trash at once. Some caveats: I realize that this would probably be hellishly confusing to novice users. Hmm. Could there be some way for power users to add desired commands to the menus? As long as I'm wishing, I'd like to be able to add a "Rebuild Desktop" command to my Special menu. Another caveat: please do real (Unix-style) pattern-matching instead of half-assed DOS pattern matching! Another request to change an oddness in Finder behavior. In a Finder that's had "Title Click" enabled, try this: Let A, B, and C be folders such that A contains B, which contains C, and folders A and C are open, but not B. C is the currently active window. Option-double-click on the title bar of folder C. It opens folder B, and then closes the window showing folder A. I think that this ought to close folder C instead, because usually, holding down Option as you open a folder from within a given folder closes the current folder for you. In particular, this ought to be fixed before System 7 comes out with aliases. What happens if you Option-Double-Click on an aliased folder, and it closes some unexpected folder? Ralph -- Ralph Melton The White Rabbit ralphm@portia.stanford.edu "When you hear of a storybook romance, you don't think of the storybook as being _Alice in Wonderland_ . . ."
philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) (12/11/90)
In article <1990Dec10.220619.13452@portia.Stanford.EDU>, ralphm@elaine22.stanford.edu (Ralph Melton) writes: |> I'd like an item in the Edit menu, just above "Select All", that says |> "Select Pattern." You'd select this menu item, specify a wild-card pattern |> somehow, and then it would select all the files in the current folder that |> had names matching the pattern. So in one fell swoop, for instance, you |> could select all the files in a folder called "Backup of *" and drag them |> to the trash at once. [...] Just to comment on this specific request - you are already halfway there with the "View By" feature, which makes it possible to view in aplhabetic order, by date, etc. All that's needed is an extension to the menu View by Other ... which would pop up a dialog in which you typed a pattern. Anything matching the pattern would be at the top of the list, ready to grab and drag the the trash, double click on etc. This could be modelled on the Sort feature of spreadsheets, where you could sort by more than one attribute (pattern, then date etc.). Combined with the System 7 feature of viewing the directory tree in a window, this could allow some interesting variations, like allowing a pattern to include folder names. Given the lateness of System 7, don't expect any of this to appear soon. -- Philip Machanick philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
lsr@Apple.com (Larry Rosenstein) (12/12/90)
In article <1990Dec10.220619.13452@portia.Stanford.EDU>, ralphm@elaine22.stanford.edu (Ralph Melton) writes: > > I'd like an item in the Edit menu, just above "Select All", that says > "Select Pattern." You'd select this menu item, specify a wild-card pattern > somehow, and then it would select all the files in the current folder that > had names matching the pattern. So in one fell swoop, for instance, you > could select all the files in a folder called "Backup of *" and drag them > to the trash at once. You can do this in System 7, with the new Find command. It doesn't provide a full filename pattern facility, but it does handle the most common cases. (You can even do this on an entire volume if you wish.) > In particular, this ought to be fixed before System 7 comes out with aliases. > What happens if you Option-Double-Click on an aliased folder, and it closes > some unexpected folder? Double click on the title bar is gone in System 7. Instead if you hold down the command key and click, you get a popup menu of the entire path to the folder. Selecting any item from the menu opens/brings to the front that window. My impression from limited use is that the option modifier (close the current window) is used in more cases in System 7 than before. For example, holding down the option key while double clicking an application also closes the active window.