Total Commander

As we all know, TC is great tool, which gives user efficient access to things, finding files, viewing files, etc. But there's one area that's still missing. Filesystem permissions are burried deep and relatively hard to access. I understand that most users don't care about that, because they don't do anything with it. But for us who do, it would be great help, if TC made it more accessible.

Problem:
Let's say I have ten directories and I need to check who has access to them and why. Currently it means:

1) Right click on directory
2) Select Properties from menu
3) Click Security tab in dialog

Then I can see list of users and know if some is there at all or not. But to see exact permissions, I have to select listed users one by one. And it still won't tell me from where exactly they got it. So it's better to use the next dialog.

4) Click Advanced button

Now I have this informative dialog, where I can see everything I need:

http://web.hisoftware.cz/sob/tc/windows-permissions-dialog.png

But look how much I had to do to get to it. And worse, I have to do all this again for every single directory!

Proposed solution:
Integrate something like the previous dialog directly in TC. To be as efficient as possible, it could work as another panel mode, same as current Show->Quick View Panel. There would be new Show->Permissions View (or some better name), and it would show permissions for file selected in the other panel:

http://web.hisoftware.cz/sob/tc/tc-permissions.png

It would be better to slightly reorganize it, to fit even in smaller windows, but that's just a detail. Compare efficiency with the previous, all I need to do is select Show->Permissions View (or use a hotkey) once, and then to view permission of some directory (or file), I just click on it. One item, one click. Ten directories? That's nothing. Give me hundered and it still won't be any problem.

Bonus:
The above is meant primarily for viewing. Read-only mode with perhaps a button to open the system dialog (where user could modify things) would be perfectly fine. Although modifications in system dialog (all the steps to select users) are also a chore that could perhaps be streamlined in some way. I didn't think it through yet, but again, it would be nice bonus, but not required.

Perhaps someone could make a WLX plugin that would show the required info in Quick View?

Here is a quick and dirty AHK script that shows the information for the item under cursor upon clicking the middle mouse button or pressing left ctrl - left win or right ctrl - menu. Any of the previusly mentioned key combos then hides the info again. Works with the keyboard shortcuts of the English version of Windows. Roman

I'm sure it would be possible to write wlx plugin that could be used in Quick View.

But it sort of conflicts with other plugins, doesn't it? If there's e.g. image file, it makes sense (even though it would not be typical use case) to see both file permissions and the image itself. I'm not even sure, if I can easily switch between specific plugins in Quick View (I never needed it and I don't see any obvious way right now). But even if I can, it's additional step I'd like to avoid.

Another thing is that environments, where this would be most useful, often tend to be restricted when it comes to installing things, and not only with actual technical obstacles. So the less additional things needed, the better. That goes for both plugins and AHK.

Sob,
Those ideas were just workarounds, if you need something quick and dirty now.

Roman

I'm not complaining. I had the idea with wlx plugin myself. In fact, I'd probably be able to write it, if I tried really hard, it would just take a lot of time, because I usually don't do this kind of programming. But mainly, I don't think that the result would be as user friendly as built-in function. And I appreciate the script too, it will be a small bit that will eventually lead to me learning AHK, I hope.