Isshou

I worked a little on File Commander and added few features like

• modified main window layout for better resizing
• directory size is taken into account when selecting files (if size column is visible)
• favourite directories

These new features are not in any release yet. Now I started working on packer plugins support so next release will be after I finish that and I expect it will take several weeks. It will support only browsing archive, testing it and unpacking files. Other packer plugin methods will be done later.

Ok ok, calm down . I finally put working version of File Commander to download on Sourceforge project website. It's compiled as mentioned in previous post with Qt 4.2.3 and for me seems more or less stable.

I would like to point out one (of many…) bug which is about Lister – you can't open large files with it (if it's not first opened by plugin). It can't handle them very well because they are whole loaded into memory and I can assure you that you don't want to wait till you 650MB avi file loads into memory (and that all twice but that's another part of story ). For this (I think it's that) is opened bug by Trolltech #151667. That's the reason I didn't try to implement it myself. I will wait till it will be solved by Trolltech. Maybe I can set file size cap there for now. Similar problem is with file icons – this is already done in Qt 4.3.0 but I can't use this version now.

And please consider that version 0.0.0.1 really means it's just to show you how it looks like (I mean functionally, there is nothing to wonder about graphics…). and that it is far from daily use. Somebody can at least look how Qt application works or tell me how it should work .
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because I forgot it at home :) . I finally made working (at least for me) release with Qt 4.2.3 (last stable version). With Qt 4.3.0beta Lister window lost main menu (don't know why yet) and with 4.3.0rc1 there is another problem with crashing as mentioned before. I wanted to make release with some Qt 4.3.0 version because it supports extracting icons from files – it was the only graphics in this application . Hopefully later…

I was almost prepared to release fixed version but… I don't know why I find out just now my Lister's main menu disappears, hmm. I bet yesterday was there , I will have to test it much more. The rev 275 has only fixed few bugs and the crash is „solved“ by compiling it with Qt 4.3.0beta instead of Qt 4.3.0rc1. So maybe it's Qt's bug, maybe mine (more likely). I already found one mine by just use of newer Qt version.

Another strange thing for me is that it's not crashing with Qt 4.3.0rc1 compiled by Visual Studio where I'm developing it (the release is then compiled by MinGW compiler, but even release made by Visual Studio is working without crash). And yet another one – I included QDebug in class where is drive switching implemented, added only qDebug() commands (to show custom warnings) and it works with MinGW compiler too…

At home I can use Visual Studio C++ Express with unofficial Q…/Free patch for Qt. Other way I have to work with Eclipse and GDB debugger but in comparsion to Visual Studio it's almost unusable for me. Eclipse (with CDT C++ plugin) is for me very slow and I've got many IDE errors while debugging. And usually I have to restart whole Eclipse in between every debug because it doesn't react on breakpoints or just show errors and doesn't start debug at all.

There are actually two reasons I want to make release with MinGW:

• do not rely on unoffical patch
• prepare it for Linux platform where I will use probably GCC compiler

I heard something that Trolltech is preparing plugin or something like this for Eclipse. I hope it's true and will be better than CDT which doesn't suit me very well. Or if you can recommend me something else… I tried NetBeans but I had problems to set compiler and code completion doesn't work for me at all. Portable Visual Studio would be perfect , but I can't use .NET if I'm not at home.

Yesterday I made a release of alpha version File Commander but today I deleted it. That's all because I find out there is a bug that prevents copy or move files with subdirectories. This is already fixed but I find out another one (besides the others I already know… ). File Commander crashes when switching to drive without media inserted and then to drive with media. So… I will try to fix this till tomorrow and put next version to download again.

I have in plan to release alpha version of File Commander for Windows in next few weeks. Linux version will be later because I have to make some „code corrections“ to make it work there and I will probably wait till new Qt framework release (June). I found out that the project is not compilable with MinGW (Windows) so it won't probably be able to compile with GCC (Linux) too – I'm developing it with Visual Studio 2005 C++ Express. So before this first alpha release I will modify sources to make it work with MinGW and later GCC, but there is a little problem with Microsoft specific keyword __uuidof… we will see.

Some new features are tabs for dir view, simple command line and someting else I can't remember now.

Response from Trolltech was very quick. I was informed there is another method values() that returns every received pair key/value from HTTP header. I noticed this method before too but not the return value, I thought it returns only list of values – without keys. And as I tried now it works excellent, so… thanks to Trolltech .

In general, good . I hope I will be able to make some alpha version binary build soon to let you see how it looks like. For now there are still only compilable (usually last) source files in SVN (probably compilable for Windows only, I will make some modification for Linux later). So at least features that are done in this time:

• main window with two panels, main menu and button in the bottom
• directory view in panels with customizable column set
• executing of associated files (Windows only, other OS only executable files)
• operations copy, move, new directory and delete
• copy, move and delete can be done in foreground, background and in a queue
• background and queued operations are processed in separate thread
• support of Windows Explorer context menu
• editing files in notepad (Windows only)
• readonly view files with search support
• support of Total Commander content plugins (at about 90% progress, some types have to be done but I have no plugin with them)
• support of Total Commander lister plugins (about 70% progress – some functions are not implemented yet)

Now I'm working on file finding which I will use in file marking. After this I have in plan some basic command line and then there could be alpha version out …

Finally I have received last week CHPP approvement to make application for Hattrick – online football manager. For now I have asked for two functions – HTML generator and Training scheduler and both were approved. But because I'm already working on File Commander I decided to make only HTML generator function which I would like to use for generating posts on my club web site. Training scheduler has been postponed.

I started development three days ago and today is HTML generator postponed too… That's all because I can't receive any Hattrick information with present QHttp implementation of Qt framework. There are needed two cookies to send with every request but I receive and can send only one. I think I have three possible solutions for this:

• fix it on my own
• wait till „fixed“ QHttp implementation
• write own QHttp class with support of more cookies

The first one – as I can see in QHttp source it shouldn't be so hard (in fact receive all header information takes about 3 lines of code ) but I think it's not a good idea because this way the fix will be needed in future versions of Qt too till it will be modified by Trolltech. And it's not „clean“ way to fix it – by modifying Qt framework source code.

So the second one – several minutes ago I create new task in Trolltech's Task Tracker. I will wait for some response and if it will look like it could be „fixed“ in next version I will wait till it's release. If not then…

third option – write my communication class with Hattrick web site. I already tried to make some class with QHttp subclassed but it's not possible. It's because there are some private classes declared in cpp files which are accessible only during Qt compilation so that's not the right way. Another option is to use QTcpSocket class and that's the last (right) option.

Now I wait for some response in Task Tracker and after this I will make decision.

Isshou