Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Just as an example, I
> have never seen a soft link used in Windows, or seen the need for a soft 
> link other than to fix broken programs that hard-coded file names that they 
> were supposed to be pulling out of the environment. People don't use soft 
> links to point to the right location - they use configuration variables.

  Well, duh. People don't use soft links because Windows doesn't support
them. Seems plainly obvious.

  I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be writing that if Windows had full support
for soft links from day one to this day.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 21-4-2010 22:39, Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Nope. Every window has a search box in it, *and* that search box handles the 
>> complex file formats too. If all you want to do is search for a text string 
>> in a directory tree, Windows has that.
> 
>   Do you honestly think I would be claiming that it doesn't work if I hadn't
> tried it already? It doesn't work.
> 
>   I really got once stuck because I just *couldn't* find what I was
> searching for. I knew the string was in some files and I wanted to know
> which of them, but the damn thing simply refused to tell me, no matter
> what I tried. (IIRC I was searching for C++ files which include a specific
> header or something like that. I ended up having to figure that out by
> other means.)

Seems like you have the same problem as me.

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Nekar Xenos <nek### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I'm a total n00b as I can't seem to install anything without the Package  
> Manager...

  That's what package managers are for. If the software you want is in a
repository, then you *should* use your distro's package manager to install
it. It makes everything easier and smoother.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>> Part of the problem comes from programs that don't support soft links 
>> getting caught in loops.
> 
>   Soft links are and should be invisible to programs (unless the program
> explicitly wants to distinguish them, as a file explorer would).

Exactly my point. Write a program in Linux that walks a directory tree and 
does *not* account for soft links (or "..") and you have a problem.

>> Why the heck would
> 
>   Did you mispaste that?

I think a meeting popped up.

>   I don't want to see it in a separate dialog. I want to see it in the file
> listing.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/shell/shellextguideindex.aspx

More specifically,
http://www.codeproject.com/kb/shell/ShellExtGuide8.aspx

>> And which byte count do you want?
> 
>   The size of the file. How many bytes it contains. If I opened it with a
> program and started reading bytes, how many I would get before EOF.

Open it raw, or processed, or for backup?  There's *lots* of file opens in 
Windows. They give you different byte counts.  Do you want the number of 
bytes you'd get by reading the compressed file and uncompressing it on the 
fly, or the number of bytes you'd need to copy the file to another disk, or 
the number of bytes you'd need to store the file in a way that can be 
reconstructed (i.e., with ACLs and such).  And if you have multiple streams, 
do you want the bytes from those streams as well?

Really, files in Windows aren't just "how many bytes."  It's really, 
actually more complicated than that.

>   Windows Explorer already shows that size in the file listing... but not
> in bytes (unless the file happens to be smaller than 1 kB or such). That's
> what's annoying about it.

On the rare occasion I wanted exact byte counts, I used Properties. I find 
it more annoying that Linux doesn't put thousands-separators in numbers, so 
when it shows me the size of a 20G file, it takes me lots of staring to 
figure it out. :-)


>> So write an extension, if it bothers you.
> 
>   You make it sound like it's easy.

Then take the sample above and change it to show the column you want. It 
isn't that hard. Heck, just read thru the text listed on that page and see 
if there's anything that's unclear. (Of course there is, but not obviously 
so. Not so unclear that you'd have a hard time clarifying it. :-)

I'll grant you that I don't know of a trivial scripting solution, but I 
expect putting one of those together would be fun.

>   Seeing the exact size of a file is a pretty common and useful thing to
> want.

For programmers, yes. Not for regular users. And you can see it with one 
extra step. :-)

>   Except that it doesn't tell that. If you try to copy it to another file
> system or an archive file, it will most probably end up taking a completely
> different amount of space.

Hence the "which size do you want" question. :-)  That's another good point: 
if it's an archive, do you want the size of the archive, the size of the 
total files in the archive, etc? :-)

>   Showing how much disk space a file takes is *useless* information. *That*
> is what should be in some info dialog. The file listing should show the
> exact byte size. Apple has done it completely in reverse of what it should be.

I think showing it as a readable size ("1.7 meg") is reasonable. Showing it 
as "size in bytes" and "size on disk" are fine too.

>   Yeah, start doing that to a dozen files, rather than seeing it in one
> glance in the file listing. It *is* extremely inconvenient.

If I want the total, I pick a dozen files and say "properties" and it tells 
me the total. If I want to compare some in one window with some in another, 
it's mildly more tedious. I might even have to open a shell script or 
something. But even as a nerd, I don't do that too often. Mostly after doing 
a download, to make sure I got all the bytes.

>> You're bitching that a nerd feature is convenient in Linux and not Windows? 
>> You're a nerd. Exact file sizes are important to programmers, not users.
> 
>   And that's why they just *can't* include an option somewhere to turn on
> showing exact byte sizes? "Hey, it's a nerd option, we must not include
> such a thing! Heaven forbid if we start appealing to the nerd users!"
>   I ask once again: What exactly would be the *problem* here?

No, they *can* make that possible.  You're not their target audience 
(namely, a nerd who doesn't program Windows).  Hence, they haven't 
implemented it. They spent their time on other things.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Warp wrote:
>   Do you honestly think I would be claiming that it doesn't work if I hadn't
> tried it already? It doesn't work.

You talked about XP. I'm talking about Vista, where it works far better.  I 
used Agent Ransack all the time on XP. Now I just use Vista search, unless 
I'm specifically searching somewhere non-indexed (like inside the System32 
directory) or I'm looking for a regex.

>> If all you want to do is search for a 
>> regular expression in a directory tree, it's trivial to add that to Windows 
>> either with a GUI or without.
> 
>   You have a really odd definition of "trivial".
> 
>   My definition of "trivial" is if it would be something like "write 'xyz'
> here, and it will work".
> 
>   Apparently your definition of "trivial" is "not impossible".

My definition of trivial is "download this .exe and put it in your search 
path." Try google for "win32 grep" and you get several hits, one of which is 
a direct GNU port.

>> If you want to know how to do searches that 
>> are difficult in Linux, then it's going to be complex in Windows too.
> 
>   "grep 'xyz.hh' *" isn't very difficult in Linux. It seems to be in Windows
> (at least when using Windows Explorer).

XP, or Vista?  As I said, it's broken in XP.  I know that. That's why I'm 
pointing you to win32 grep and at Agent Ransack.  I'm offering you my 
experience as a programmer on Windows having met and overcome the same 
frustrations.  If you really just want to bitch that there are some things 
easy in Linux that are hard in Windows, then fine.

>> I'm 
>> not going to teach you how to do that any more than you're going to explain 
>> how to write the same searches using Linux tools.
> 
>   Do you know why? Because it's *not* trivial in Windows.

The thing I refused to explain (such as finding text in document comments 
but not document content) isn't trivial in Linux, either.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Just as an example, I
>> have never seen a soft link used in Windows, or seen the need for a soft 
>> link other than to fix broken programs that hard-coded file names that they 
>> were supposed to be pulling out of the environment. People don't use soft 
>> links to point to the right location - they use configuration variables.
> 
>   Well, duh. People don't use soft links because Windows doesn't support
> them. Seems plainly obvious.

It has some support. People don't use them because they don't need them, 
really.  Software is written to not hard-code paths that don't need to be 
hard-coded. *Some* people nevertheless hard-code paths, so you wind up with 
soft links from "Documents and Settings" to "Users" or just leaving 64-bit 
code under System32.

>   I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be writing that if Windows had full support
> for soft links from day one to this day.

Uh, yes, actually, I would.  I think soft links are an abomination, and I've 
only ever seen them used to basically correct flaws in software 
configurations. If I had something like a registry in Linux, I'd probably 
never use a soft link. As it is, I tend to have one soft link per project 
that sits in the root and points to the base of the tree of project code and 
configuration.  I'm all for fixing problems right, myself.

It's not like UNIX had them from day one either.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Darren New wrote:
> Uh, yes, actually, I would.  I

BTW, you'll notice that nowhere did I saw Windows is better. I simply said 
there's different target audience, and a different way of doing things, so 
complaining that it doesn't come with all those tools you regularly use is 
not an especially useful criticism.

I'm sure the stock brokers also bitch that the Windows calculator can do 
square roots and hex, but it doesn't do cost of future value calculations or 
compound interest calculations.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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discussion : 4BC### [at] gmailcom...
> On 21-4-2010 22:39, Warp wrote:
>>   I really got once stuck because I just *couldn't* find what I was
>> searching for. I knew the string was in some files and I wanted to know
>> which of them, but the damn thing simply refused to tell me, no matter
>> what I tried. (IIRC I was searching for C++ files which include a 
>> specific
>> header or something like that. I ended up having to figure that out by
>> other means.)
>
> Seems like you have the same problem as me.

Google for messages about search not finding [programming language name] 
files in [windows version]. The general trick is to tell windows to index 
these files and not just the default ones but how to do this is 
version-specific (and well-hidden, particularly in XP). It's indeed annoying 
(I have to search for this at least once a year) but it's not exactly 
difficult to find for folks who program for a living ;)

G.

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Gilles Tran wrote:
> index these files and not just the default ones but how to do this is 
> version-specific (and well-hidden, particularly in XP). 

I wish there was a way to tell Vista to back up the files I want it to back 
up. But nooooooo, MS figures you'd *never* want an exe file backed up, even 
if it's in your home directory.

Which spoils what would otherwise be a quite useful tool.  Had to script my 
own, dammit. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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"Orchid XP v8" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:4bcf3d9c$1@news.povray.org...
<snip>
> As part of the Disaster Recovery plan I keep going on about, I had to set 
> up a PC with two NICs and configure it as a NAT router. Now, in fairness, 
> as far as I can tell Windoze can't do this *at all*. But it was pretty 
> hard to do from Linux either.
<snip>

Absolute rubbish, Windows is quite capable of doing exactly this.

Why do you spell Windows incorrectly it all the time btw?

Cheers Dre

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