I'm thinking of trying to create a "drop box" application that can automatically organize files as you drop them into a folder. I always end up with a bunch of random files on my desktop, and I think it would be useful to be able to drag them onto an icon/folder on the desktop and have them automatically sorted into other locations based on some rules (file extensions, naming conventions, etc.)
I'm not sure how to implement this. Can anyone point me to any resources/tips on how to accomplish something like this? Maybe some sort of drag and drop folder extension?
One idea would be to have a background process that periodically checks a folder and just moves files around, but it would be cool to have this happen automagically w/out a background process.
Thanks
In C# FileSystemWatcher is your friend, check a little tutorial. It's just a wrapper over ReadDirectoryChangesW on Win32 so you could use if you use another language. Linux provide the same via dnotify.
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I would like to display the folders in my Workspace by Date Modified, but the files inside the folders by Filename.
Using the settings I can one or the other, but not both.
Is there an existing way to achieve this? If not; are there any recommendations on how to create an extension to do this?
Note: I am not allowed to use 3rd party extensions on my work computer, so I have to roll my own.
Thanks
I am working in matlab gui GUIDE and I am trying to rename a file. I open the fig file in GUIDE and save it as the new file name but a new .m file is NOT created. Consequently I cannot run the gui or edit the file. I have seen a lot of posts about this and many people say "Save As" should just work which is strange because it was working for me yesterday too. Does anyone know the reason why sometimes GUIDE does not automatically generate an m file?
The two files MUST have the same name. See the documentation here: http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_guis/files-generated-by-guide.html
Further more, I can't find specific examples in the documentation, but there seems to be a common issue with Callbacks and UI property names getting a little messed up. The best bet is of course is to not touch the file names (or create the GUI programmatically) but now that the damage is done, I would reccommend:
Making sure both files have the same name
Checking all button callbacks to make sure they point to the right file
Checking the tag of all your graphics objects to make sure they are the sames
Double check in your GUIDE options that it is still set to generate an mfile ( Tools > Gui options > Create m file )
Best of luck, GUIDE can be good, but is very far from perfect. (especially in times like now)
Is there a plugin that lets you manually add files to lists/categories? Something like Mylyn but manual and more files--kind of the way Gmail manages mail--a tagging system.
If I let mylyn manage my windows it actually closes them without any way to shut off (Something I absolutely cannot tolerate, I use my open windows to remind me of what I'm working on--my memory absolutely NEEDS the help)--on top of that it automatically adds files to lists just because that list happens to be open when I start doing something else.
I guess I'm thinking of a plugin that offers a different version of the "Package Explorer", one that is organized by task instead of by package hierarchy, and allows you to move files around at will.
...or is there a way to adapt an existing tool to do this (without actually moving the files around, of course!) Bookmarks don't seem to offer a "Grouping" but using a common first word for the description in my bookmarks may work... Any other ideas?
After messing with it a bit more, it looks like bookmarks might do what I want. It is possible to filter bookmarks by searching the subject string, so as long as I put tags in the subject string I can select a sub-filter and have it bring up all the relevant files for a given task.
I won't accept this for a while in case someone has a better answer (a plugin perhaps?)
Sometimes when we issue an upgrade to our application we need to install some files to the application's Data folder. We want to make it possible for the users to move this folder to a place of their liking. But how to deal with this at install time?
I was thinking of deploying to the user's AppData folder and have the application somehow check there for new files at startup.
Any advice or references would be very welcome!
We use InnoSetup for a VB6 application if that matters for your answer.
Generally the best solution I've found is to allow the user to move the folder from within the application.
This allows the application to keep track of where its data is being kept (by adding a reference to it in a file or registry entry which it accesses at load time) and to access it seamlessly in the future.
Your update routines can then also access this information to determine where to place the update files.
Alternatively, make sure the folder name is as distinctive as possible and add a search routine to look for the directory in a number of sensible places at load time. Then write your manual specifying that the data folder can be moved to one of those locations ONLY.
Wouldn't the users just run an update or patch package? I'm not sure why they'd want or need to see such files. It's pretty rare for commercial software to offer users the options of where to store program settings and other internal-use files.
Give some thought to this before putting a lot of stuff into users' roaming profiles. You might want LocalAppData instead.
My wife complains that I have too many icons on the Windows XP-Pro desktop.
I like to be able to quickly drop a file onto the icon for application I want to have open it. And I like to follow a link to open often-used deeply nested folders rather than navigate there. Thus, I have over 100 icons on the desktop.
(We share the same user account because we switch back and forth so often and because we both need to access the same e-mail, so separate accounts isn't the answer.)
I'd like to write a program which would have similar functionality to the Windows desktop. Then I could open that window to do the drag and drop work, but, when minimized, would leave the desktop display sparsely populated for my wife. As an added bonus, I could implement better organization of the icons than the desktop allows.
This is similar to what an Explorer window does, with the key exception that the desktop allows you to do some arrangement of icons. (For instance, program icons on the left (with the most used ones near the top), folders at the top, data files on the right.)
How do I go about getting an icon to display in a Windows Form (or on an appropriate control on the form)? (For instance, if I drop in a link to Notepad or a link to a file folder.)
How do I take the same action that the desktop does if the icon is double clicked? (For instance, if a link to a folder is double clicked.)
How do I take the same action that the desktop does if the icon has something dragged onto it? (For instance, a text file is dragged onto the Notepad icon.)
I'm using Visual Studio and C#.NET for programming.
I know how to do basic drag and drop.
I do not know:
A. what controls to use on the form to display the icons
B. how to find the icon
C. what commands are built by the desktop under various situations (so I can emulate the functionality)
I apologize that this is a multi-part question, but it was hard to break apart without explaining the whole story again.
This is a big question, but I'll give you some quick thoughts to get things moving in the right direction. WinForms exposes the functionality needed to make this happen, it's just a matter of wiring everything up the way you want it.
The key piece that you will want to look into is Drag/Drop, which is very well supported by WinForms. If you implement your icons as ImageBoxes you can set the AllowDrop property on the program icons and then handle the DragDrop event and have it call an overload of System.Diagnostics.Process() to start the application with the dropped filename as an argument.
As far as finding icons, most programs have their icon included as a resource in their .EXE file or in a related .DLL.
Regarding question C, the underlying question is what behaviors of the desktop would you like to have in your program? Explorer.exe is a massive application that does far more than what you need or what you will need or want to implement. Once you decide what functionality you want, play around with the IntelliSense list of events for the form and imagebox controls. You'll find that a lot of behavior is given to you for free in the Windows common controls, and additional behavior is fairly easy to add by handling the appropriate events.
Why dont you just use a Virtual Desktop??
Try http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/
You will skip a lot of coding.
Right from their page:
"VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager for the Windows operating system (Win9x/ME/NT/Win2K/XP/Win2003/Vista). A virtual desktop manager lets you organize applications over several virtual desktops (also called 'workspaces'). Virtual desktops are very common in Unix/Linux, and once you get accustomed to using them, they become an essential part of a productive workflow."