featurewish (switching from DevonThink to EF)

I’m in the process of switching from DevonThink Pro to EagleFiler. While doing that I’m coming across a few things I miss and a few things I’d like to see, and was wondering if you have any plans of adding these (I did search the forum before asking these question, and as far as I coud find these weren’t asked before):

1:You recently added editing text files, which I love, but I would also like to to the option to open a file in it’s own new window (without the need to open another application).

2: Better keyboard navigation: being able to use ‘tab’ to select the three panes, and the left-cursor closes the main folder from any folder in the list

3: Alternating colour-lines in documents-overview pane.

4: Font and background colour options.

5: When when just text from a page in Safari, I’d like to see the URL saved as well.

6: A system-wide hot-key that select the search field in EagleFiler.

7: I’d love to see something similar to the column-view in ShoeBox.

Thanks for the wonderful application that EagleFiler already is!

These seem like reasonable requests. I have a few questions, though.

Have you tried the “Open in New Window” command?

I believe Tab already works to select the different panes, although you may need to use Control-Tab to tab out of the editor so as to avoid inserting a Tab character. I don’t understand what you mean about the “left-cursor.”

You can set the fonts in the preferences window and set the background color for rich text documents using the font panel. Are you referring to something else?

This will be in the next version.

As always, thanks for the quick reply.

With regards to ‘open in new window’, what I really mean is a new window showing just the content, not the source- or documents-pane. A bit similar to when you double-click an email.
I collect and read a lot of information and would love to be able to open text/pdf/web files in their own window. I hope this is a better explanation of what I meant/want.

I’ll also try to explain my tabs/cursor question.
When in Apple Mail, I can select a folder, and when pressing ‘tab’ I can navigate directly to the list-pane, content-pane and find search-field, eventually ending up at the folder-pane again. Something like this I’d like in EagleFiler. I did try control-tab, but it didn’t do anything here.

Sorry, I didn’t explain my cursor-question more clearly, I’ll give it another go.
Say I have a folder containing 4 other folders. When selecting the main folder I can open it by pressing the ‘right-cursor’ and navigate down with the ‘down-cursor’.
Say I have selected the last sub-folder, and I want to close the main folder, I first have to go up to the main folder, close it with the ‘left-cursor’, and only then I’m able to navigate down again to another main folder. Some programs allow closing a main-folder from any sub-folder, and this is what I’d like to see in EagleFiler.

I had overlooked the font options weirdly enough. Thanks for pointing that out. With regards to colour, I’d love to be able to chance the background colour in the source list.

Thanks for the good news about saving the url when saving text! Excellent!!

OK, I understand what you want. Right now, you can get it with a few extra steps by using Open In New Window, followed by Command-| and Command-\ to hide the source list and records list. I have a variety of improvements planned for the way EagleFiler handles multiple windows. In general, however, I think you’ll be happier opening PDFs and Web archives in separate, more specialized applications.

In EagleFiler, starting in the source list, the first Tab takes you to the record viewer, the next Tab (or Control-Tab if the viewer was editable) takes you to the tags bar, the next Tab goes to the records list, then to the search field, and then back to the source list. Perhaps this is not the best possible order–it’s default one chosen by Cocoa–but in my experience it does work.

Could you give me an example of such a program? I tried Mail and the FInder, and they seem to work like EagleFiler.

OK, I understand what you want. Right now, you can get it with a few extra steps by using Open In New Window, followed by Command-| and Command-\ to hide the source list and records list. I have a variety of improvements planned for the way EagleFiler handles multiple windows. In general, however, I think you’ll be happier opening PDFs and Web archives in separate, more specialized applications.

Nice to read you have improvements planned for viewing multiple windows. It’s a pity, though, there are currently no plans to allow EagleFiler to view files in their own window.

In EagleFiler, starting in the source list, the first Tab takes you to the record viewer, the next Tab (or Control-Tab if the viewer was editable) takes you to the tags bar, the next Tab goes to the records list, then to the search field, and then back to the source list. Perhaps this is not the best possible order–it’s default one chosen by Cocoa–but in my experience it does work.

I gave it another try, and yes , it does work., somewhat :wink: Seems I have to get used to another way of navigating.

Could you give me an example of such a program? I tried Mail and the FInder, and they seem to work like EagleFiler.

DevonThink. Another example is OmniOutliner. The notes are technically not folders, but you can collapse a note from any sub-note.

Thanks again for the quick feedback.

That’s not quite what I said. There are already commands to open in another application and to open in a new three-pane window. I don’t want to change the latter to always work the way you describe, and I’d really like to avoid adding a third command to open in a new one-pane window. So therefore I would like to find some way to fold this into Open In New Window without your having to manually hide the source list and records list each time.

I will add the parent-folder collapsing to the to-do list.

Thanks very much for clearing that up. I did indeed misread that, sorry.

Related idea:

When a subfolder within an expanded folder is selected left-arrow would select its parent folder and another left-arrow would collapse that folder. And possibly make right-arrow jump to the bottom subfolder. The intent is to make up/down-arrow navigation easier within folders that contain many subfolders after using left/right-arrow for jumping to the top/bottom. A counter-argument might be that EF folders never contain enough subfolders to necessitate top/bottom navigation shortcuts.

That explanation might be improved after I’m more familiar with EF, which I’ve only started testing EF an hour ago.

Keyboard Navigation

I find the way Tinderbox works very intuitive:

child = something nested in a directory
parent = one hierarchical level towards the root

  • arrow right opens a directory and selects the first child
  • arrow left selects the parent, no matter which child was selected but leaves the directory open
  • arrow left + command folds (closes) the selected item if it is an open directory
  • up and down move in single steps
  • type the first unique part of the title to select anything visible
  • command-f to find in hierarchie
  • Shift-Command-P to remove/reset text formatting

Something else may come in handy: To change the background colour of the library window and drop pad per library, so it’s easier to spot in Exposé.

I’ve improved this in EagleFiler 1.1.2 so that you can tab from source list to records list to viewer to source list. You’ll need Control-Tab to tab out of the viewer. To access the Tags field you can use Command-Shift-T. To access the Search field you can use Command-Option-F.

5: When when just text from a page in Safari, I’d like to see the URL saved as well.

I would love this as well. So far I like EF better than DTP or Yojimbo. Thank you. And Michael responds promptly. Barebones responded to my issue after 4 weeks.

I believe EagleFiler already does this. If you drag some text from Safari into EagleFiler, it will put the URL at the bottom of the document, and it also stores the URL for use with the “Copy Source URL” and “Open Source URL” commands.

I just dragged some text from Safari into EagleFiler and it did not put the URL at the bottom of the document. Am I missing something?

It should work for any text (not a link or graphic) dragged from the body of a Web page. You’ll need to click and hold on the selected text for a second in order to begin dragging it. Then drag it onto the Drop Pad, source list, or records list in EagleFiler. Don’t drag it onto the Dock icon, as that will cause the OS to transfer the text to EagleFiler in a different way, without the URL.

Tried again and does not work for me. Without highlighting search terms I will stick with Yojimbo.

Could you tell me the URL of the page that you tried, and which text you selected?

Your last response from this thread. Also the font on the web archive looks fine in Safari but the fonts are different sizes in the EF viewer.

Here’s the file that EagleFiler added to the library when I selected that text and dragged it to the Drop Pad. As you can see, it adds the URL at the bottom, and it retained the same font that I was using in Safari.

I dragged to the icon. When I drag to the drop pad it works just as you describe. Thank you.

Yes, that’s what I was trying to say above. EagleFiler receives more information from the OS when you drag and drop onto one of its windows than when you drop onto the Dock icon.