A bunch of queries about fiddling with Thunar

sticky_pun · 2019-08-30 16:45:37

I have just updated a Debian install to v10, Buster. Thunar is now v1.8.4, and it has many behaviour changes over what I am used to from various older versions across a few distros and machines.

I always have Thunar set to most detailed view, smallest icons/text, directory tree on the left. I like lots of information on my filesystem visible, and set out so that I can parse things the way I find fastest, lists. Since Windows 95 the default for filemangers seems to be be rows of huge icons... on Windows quickly pressing alt-v, d is essential on any strange computer I encounter (view menu, details). But I find chunkiness tedious to work with, and since the rise of the smart phone those paradigms have only got worse: on touch screens the clicking point is no longer 1 pixel, so every UI element has to be big enough that the sausage-fingered won't cause support costs for publishers.

With that rant out the way....

The directory tree, how to stop automatic expansion on one click. Should be/used to be d-click, or click on expandable dir triangle.

How to actually sort files by name, turn off assuming badly numbered files? I would rather the inconsistency of badly named files being hard to work with than well named files (ie with leading zereos, as necessary) always being a pain.

How can what is probably viewed as traditional pointer interactions be brought back? One click and drag to select, do not move. In fact, it now seems to be impossible to select multiple files at once. Consistently, anyway. I seem to remember a change with Thunar so multiple file selection had to be done on other than the name column, but even that does not seem to work now. Trying things just now only once did Thunar try and select many files in one go, and I do not know what caused it. Also shift and ctrl-clicking, and ctrl+shift+click (selects a block of files to add to an existing selection), do not seem to work at all any more.

Perhaps related is how clicking and dragging in an empty part of a directory now seems to want to move the directory. Can that behaviour be disabled?

Can Thunar be set to actually delete files on network mount, not try to move to wastebasket? Ahh, actually you get a mixture of options, to move to wastebasket or to actually delete in the dir tree list, and only to move to wastebasket in the file pane. And shift-click on move to wastebasket in the file pane does not do immediately delete, as it used to.

This deletion behaviour means that if a network share has a RO directory and writable child directories, trying to move to wastebasket a file in a writable sub-dir just causes an error (unable to find/create wastebasket), and the file is not deleted. It seems that it will be impossible to delete a file with Thunar in this situation.

Is there a means to customise the toolbar? Ideally I'd like to be able to make buttons smaller and maybe remove them, make the address bar less tall, and move it all into one row with file, edit, etc. To get rid of wasted space, on widescreen monitors vertical pixels are scarce.

Is it possible to remove network mounts from the directory tree, I have them mounted in ~/network anyway and have done it like that for years.

But worst of all UI behaviour changes, IMHO, is the non-requested moving of the directory tree up or down when clicking into a sub dir with many siblings, to try and get the parent directory into view.
eg click into dir 20 in the below and if ~/scratch is out of view in the directory tree, it will be moved into view at the top. Moving dir 20 downward. Or if still not enough room 20 will be moved to the bottom of the dir tree.

~
 |
 + Desktop
 + scratch
   + 1
   + 2
   + 3
   + 4
  .....
   + 20
   + 21
 |
.....

There has to be a way to not jump the directory tree about without the user explicitly scrolling?

Anyone got any ideas if all the mouse-over effects are a GTK3 thing or Thunar itself?

Thanks so much for humouring this post, I know I'm set in my ways when it comes to UIs and software, so please don't see this post as me slating people's hard work.

PS I am also a bit stunned that there still isn't an undo option off the edit menu. That saved my bacon so many times back on Windows (2k3 server was the last one I used for anything significant) if a drag/drop went wrong, that kind of thing.

ToZ · 2019-08-30 19:09:56

Hello and welcome to the forums.

sticky_pun wrote:

The directory tree, how to stop automatic expansion on one click. Should be/used to be d-click, or click on expandable dir triangle.

This one is odd. If by "directory tree" you are referring to the content on the left sidebar of thunar, then for me, double-click is always required (or the triangle). I am surprised that single-click has that affect for you. However, if you are referring to the content on the right-side in the main window, there is a setting to control that located at Edit > Preferences > Behavior.

---

How to actually sort files by name, turn off assuming badly numbered files? I would rather the inconsistency of badly named files being hard to work with than well named files (ie with leading zereos, as necessary) always being a pain.

There is an existing bug report for this.

---

How can what is probably viewed as traditional pointer interactions be brought back? One click and drag to select, do not move. In fact, it now seems to be impossible to select multiple files at once. Consistently, anyway. I seem to remember a change with Thunar so multiple file selection had to be done on other than the name column, but even that does not seem to work now. Trying things just now only once did Thunar try and select many files in one go, and I do not know what caused it. Also shift and ctrl-clicking, and ctrl+shift+click (selects a block of files to add to an existing selection), do not seem to work at all any more.
Perhaps related is how clicking and dragging in an empty part of a directory now seems to want to move the directory. Can that behaviour be disabled?

This, I think is a bug too. This bug report acknowledges the issue and states that if you start the drag/select from a non-name column, it still works. Occasionally, in my testing, this also gets hung up and I have to right-click and cancel to get back to a state where I can select from non-name columns again.

---

Can Thunar be set to actually delete files on network mount, not try to move to wastebasket? Ahh, actually you get a mixture of options, to move to wastebasket or to actually delete in the dir tree list, and only to move to wastebasket in the file pane. And shift-click on move to wastebasket in the file pane does not do immediately delete, as it used to.
This deletion behaviour means that if a network share has a RO directory and writable child directories, trying to move to wastebasket a file in a writable sub-dir just causes an error (unable to find/create wastebasket), and the file is not deleted. It seems that it will be impossible to delete a file with Thunar in this situation.

This has been addressed in a recent commit and is in the 1.8.7 version.

---

Is there a means to customise the toolbar? Ideally I'd like to be able to make buttons smaller and maybe remove them, make the address bar less tall, and move it all into one row with file, edit, etc. To get rid of wasted space, on widescreen monitors vertical pixels are scarce.

Yes, but you need to tweak using CSS. Here is an example of some code (add the desired snippets into ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css) and you need to restart both thunar and the thunar daemon (or log out and back in again) to see the change:

/* Make the toolbar icons smaller */
.thunar > grid > toolbar * { -gtk-icon-transform: scale(0.75); }

...change "0.75" to scale the icon to the desired size.

/* remove padding and margins in the toolbar */
#location-toolbar { padding: 0px; margin: 0px;}

...note that margins can go into the negatives to compress even more.

/* remove toolbar buttons */
#location-toolbar button { margin: -20px }

...keep lowering "-20" until they are fully gone.

/* Shift the entry part of toolbar to the left */
#location-toolbar box { margin-left: -8px; }

You can't combine the menu bar with the toolbar, but you can hide/unhide the menubar with Ctrl+m.

Is it possible to remove network mounts from the directory tree, I have them mounted in ~/network anyway and have done it like that for years.

Seems to only work when the sidebar is in "shortcuts" mode. You can right-click "NETWORK" and choose which mounts to display / not display. I believe you can also use the x-gvfs-hide mount option to hide the mounts. See https://github.com/GNOME/gvfs/blob/mast … -shown.txt.

But worst of all UI behaviour changes, IMHO, is the non-requested moving of the directory tree up or down when clicking into a sub dir with many siblings, to try and get the parent directory into view.
eg click into dir 20 in the below and if ~/scratch is out of view in the directory tree, it will be moved into view at the top. Moving dir 20 downward. Or if still not enough room 20 will be moved to the bottom of the dir tree.
~
 |
 + Desktop
 + scratch
   + 1
   + 2
   + 3
   + 4
  .....
   + 20
   + 21
 |
.....
There has to be a way to not jump the directory tree about without the user explicitly scrolling?

I believe that was this bug report that was fixed in 1.8.5.

---

PS I am also a bit stunned that there still isn't an undo option off the edit menu. That saved my bacon so many times back on Windows (2k3 server was the last one I used for anything significant) if a drag/drop went wrong, that kind of thing.

Enhancement request is here.

I know I've referenced a few bug reports in this reply. It might be best to follow them and comment directly there so that the developers can see your comments.

alcornoqui · 2019-08-31 13:56:57

Wow, thanks ToZ!

Jerry3904 · 2019-08-31 15:19:00

Impressive level of support!

hropean · 2019-09-26 14:40:56

ToZ wrote:

Hello and welcome to the forums.
sticky_pun wrote:
The directory tree, how to stop automatic expansion on one click. Should be/used to be d-click, or click on expandable dir triangle.
This one is odd. If by "directory tree" you are referring to the content on the left sidebar of thunar, then for me, double-click is always required (or the triangle). I am surprised that single-click has that affect for you. However, if you are referring to the content on the right-side in the main window, there is a setting to control that located at Edit > Preferences > Behavior.
[...]

Hi there,

I registered for this forum, just because I have the same problem with Thunar: Single-clicking on an folder item in the left sidebar expands that folder. Would be most grateful if there was a solution to this problem.

I am running Debian 10 with Xfce 4.12 and Thunar 1.8.4.

As far as I remember, this strange behaviour started after updating from Debian 9 to 10.

Thank you!

ToZ · 2019-09-27 00:52:22

Is it possibly this bug? If so, it was fixed for 1.8.5,

hropean · 2019-10-05 18:12:45

@ToZ: Thanks, highly appreciated!

LienRag · 2019-10-17 19:21:21

Hi and I hope that I'm not hijacking this thread...

I don't really understand why Thunar doesn't offer "properties" on the right-click menu when right-clicking on a folder in the left panel?
Nautilus offers it and it's really handy...

BTW is there somewhere an explanation of the differences between Nautilus, Nemo, Caja and Thunar?
I used all of them depending on the desktop manager I use, and they basically all look alike so I never understand which one does what or doesn't.

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#1 2019-08-30 16:45:37

A bunch of queries about fiddling with Thunar

#2 2019-08-30 19:09:56

Re: A bunch of queries about fiddling with Thunar

#3 2019-08-31 13:56:57

Re: A bunch of queries about fiddling with Thunar

#4 2019-08-31 15:19:00

Re: A bunch of queries about fiddling with Thunar

#5 2019-09-26 14:40:56

Re: A bunch of queries about fiddling with Thunar

#6 2019-09-27 00:52:22

Re: A bunch of queries about fiddling with Thunar

#7 2019-10-05 18:12:45

Re: A bunch of queries about fiddling with Thunar

#8 2019-10-17 19:21:21

Re: A bunch of queries about fiddling with Thunar

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