Explorer

Disclaimer

This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have prepared to help you is right here.

This project outline is not like the artificial, tidy little problems you are spoon-fed in school, when all the facts you need are included, nothing extraneous is mentioned, the answer is fully specified, along with hints to nudge you toward a single expected canonical solution. This project is much more like the real world of messy problems where it is up to you to fully the define the end point, or a series of ever more difficult versions of this project and research the information yourself to solve them.

Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; or give you any additional materials. I have too many other projects of my own.

Though I am a programmer by profession, 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 in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavour.

Please do not email me about this project without reading the disclaimer above.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to write a preplacement for Windows Explorer, the inept file manager that comes with Windows.

Features

Instead of having a current working directory, you have two current directories, a source and a target. When you say copy, you don’t have to drag files to some other directory. They automatically go to the target directory.

There are stacks of recently used source and target directories, so most of the time, you just select them, rather than typing them or navigating to them.

You can sort files by extension as well as by size, name and date.

You can flip rapidly between modes where image files are shown as filenames or as thumbnails.

You can use multi-directory wildcards with negative wildcards to collect batches of files to process as a group.

You can collect files by content using indexes, like the old DOS Magellan.

You can view files with a single keystroke using a rapid viewer. The viewer implements a Java interface allowing users to add their own viewers. The intent is to rapidly get the first page of the file up on the screen so you can tell what it is.

You can arrange that a group of files can be fed individually to an app.

Group rename works by you manually renaming a couple of files. It notices the pattern and offers to rename the other files similarly. If it guesses incorrectly, you give it a few more examples.

Windows 7

standard footer
	This page is posted on the web at:	http://mindprod.com/project/explorer.html
	Optional Replicator mirror of mindprod.com on local hard disk J:	J:\mindprod\project\explorer.html
	Please read the feedback from other visitors, or send your own feedback about the site. Contact Roedy. Please feel free to link to this page without explicit permission.
	Canadian Mind Products IP:[65.110.21.43] Your face IP:[3.16.68.10]
Feedback	You are visitor number

This page is posted
on the web at:

http://mindprod.com/project/explorer.html

Optional Replicator mirror
of mindprod.com
on local hard disk J:

J:\mindprod\project\explorer.html

Please read the feedback from other visitors, or send your own feedback about the site.
Contact Roedy. Please feel free to link to this page without explicit permission.

Canadian Mind Products
IP:[65.110.21.43]
Your face IP:[3.16.68.10]

Feedback

You are visitor number

Explorer

Disclaimer

The Mission

Features