Total Commander

How about making the persistent selection a little bit more persistent. Persistent in TC's world means not to clear the selection when another listitem get focused. The persistent selection is still cleared when going away, drinking coffee (or insert another acitivity that takes any amount of time), and reactivaying the TC window. TC may find that the directory contents have changed, reloads the contents, and resets the selection.

Why not keep the selection intact, while still reloading directory contents? This might be very useful for selecting things in a directory that you are downloading to (or is being uploaded to, by another person in the network).

I can go even further. Why not keep the selection intact even after N directory changes? You might by accident go into another directory only to come back and discover that your selection is now gone. This is a punishment in some cases and is not neccesary if TC would keep track of per-directory selection up to a certain amount of previous selections.

The persistent selection is still cleared when going away, drinking coffee (or insert another acitivity that takes any amount of time), and reactivaying the TC window. TC may find that the directory contents have changed, reloads the contents, and resets the selection.

Try pressing NUM / in that situation. If you don't have a numeric keyboard, then use Mark -> Restore selection - or make a button with the command cm_RestoreSelection
.

I know the numpad-slash trick, I was just hoping that TC would do this automatically in a future version.

Also, num-slash does work when the directory has changed, only when the content has changed (or the selection is reset for some other reason).

I guess my point is, persistent selections are not persistent, and I don't think it is logical that a change in directory contents should reset the selection. There's no practical reason for that (the only reason for it, is a technical one), as far as I can see.

The thing is the Save selection works predictably, just not the way you (and I) would expect.
It automatically saves selection if you select some files and make some operation on them and it changes it when you select and make some operation on other files. This includes operations that are selecting files automatically - showing a context menu, delete, copy (not in destination dir, since it does not select there anything), ...

Save selection "temporarily" is of almost no use. As soon as you use any other TC command the saved selection is lost.
Or if you switch panels/tabs and use "save selection" in another tab. You can no longer restore the selection in the previous tab.

The save-selection command should be PER tab, and it shouldn't be lost until you use save-selection Again.

What is "save selection" then? I lost you... Is it the same as the regular persistent selections I started this topic about?

cm_SaveSelection (cmd# 530)
cm_RestoreSelection (cmd#529)

Basically, you can select files - whether or not Norton-style-right-click select is enabled, and "briefly" save that selection.

As soon as you change dirs, or use another TC internal command (incl. saveSelection in another tab) You are no longer able to restore the selection.

The command is so fragile I'm not sure what I would ever use it for.

Compare it to TwinKey's "StickySelect" or Bookmarks ---which can be retained not only between tabs but also when you close TC and restart!

cm_SaveSelection (cmd# 530)
cm_RestoreSelection (cmd#529)

As a workaround you can use:
cm_CopyFullNamesToClip
cm_LoadSelectionFromClip

It wil stay in Clipboard until replaced by other clip.

cm_SaveSelection / cm_RestoreSelection works also after changing directories. However, TC calls cm_SaveSelection itself before most file operations, so you can use "/" on the numeric keypad for cm_RestoreSelection after most operations without the need of calling cm_SaveSelection yourself.

ghisler(Author) wrote:However, TC calls cm_SaveSelection itself before most file operations ...

And that's the problem. While sometimes this can be useful, it makes manual saving useless, because that save gets overwritten after any operation (even by a simple right-click to show a context menu). I think that a manually saved selection should be independent of the automatic one.

I think that a manually saved selection should be independent of the automatic one

I agree.

Balderstrom wrote:The save-selection command should be PER tab,

- Support

Balderstrom wrote: and it shouldn't be lost

- Support

Balderstrom wrote:until you use save-selection Again.

- Support

Balderstrom wrote:[Snip]...not only between tabs but also when you close TC and restart!

- Support