Directory and File Explorer

This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. It does not describe an actual complete program. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; I have too many other projects of my own.

I do contract work for a living, which could include writing a program such as this. However, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project any way you please.

Introduction

This student project aims to create something like Microsoft File Explorer, but that works on any Java platform. It aims to bring back some of the ease of the old Lotus Magellan or QDOS for DOS. This is more of a programmer’s tool than an end user’s tool. Some of the features:

It has quick viewers for many file types so you don’t need to launch an application just get a rough look at a file. The quick viewers don’t allow edit, just viewing and scrolling and text search.
You can rapidly navigate to spots on your disk in your favourites list, just like a browser, with bookmarks. There are three bookmark icons called source, target and place. You can assign them to directories or files or places in files with a single right click to say “from now on, until I tell you otherwise, this button means jump here” The three buttons are always accessible so you can jump to those places. The source and target bookmarks act as default directories for any copy or move operations. There are also some long term bookmarks with assignable icons, that can’t be quite so casually reassigned. Perhaps two clicks.
There is a history stack of places you have visited, (not usually counting places just passed through).
It indexes file content for rapid searching much the way Magellan did. You can give a search expression of file names, wildcards, extensions and content words you want to see, and bang, there is a list of files matching that criteria. Hitting Down Arrow lets you view the contents of each matching file in turn.
You can navigate to a directory by typing part of the name, and selecting from potential matches.
Different parts of your disk can have a different decor. That helps orient you, especially when there are similarly named files and directories on your disk. You customise directory trees with background wallpaper, colour schemes, icons.
There is a history stack of where you have been, so you can always get back to where you just were, even if you have closed that window.
If you are feeling very clever, try to make everything undoable.

Implementation

Quick Viewers implement a interface, and can be dynamically loaded. Slow viewers actually launch an app via exec. Each app has to be configured with exactly what that command looks like under each OS. Users can write their own viewers to plug in for their own file formats. You might look at how the old Magellan interface worked to get an idea how to design a high performance viewer.

SUBST

In the meantime, until somebody writes this beast, there is a trick you can use in windows to simulat bookmarks. Use subst to create fake drives P: and Q: attached to whichever directories are important and the moment. You can then refer to them as P: and Q: in commands, though there are no jump-to buttons.

J Drive

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