this is a behaviour that i got used to back in time while using windows and its file browser the explorer. Not everyone might have discovered it but i did and used it extensively when dealing with large number of files. expected behaviour: * shift+click to select a range of files * ctrl+click to add files to selection one by one * ctrl+shift+click to add a range of files to the selection. range starts from the last selected file to the clicked one. it can also deselect a range in case they are selected, just like what ctrl+click does with a single file Thunar behaviour * shift+click: OK * ctrl+click: OK * ctrl+shift+click: works like ctrl+click, affects single files. I dont know if this can be filed as a bug but i think Thunar must be compatible with general behaviour that people are used to. therfore i chose to submit it as a bug.
Yes, I'm missing this too. It's a little unexpected since everywhere else it's working that way I think.
Still reproducible on Thunar 1.6.3.
I also used this feature quite often and would like to see this. But it was posted 2009 and is still reproducible in 1.6.10, so well.
I looked a bit at the source, specifically thunar_standard_view_selection_changed in thunar-standard-view.c which calls selected_files = (*THUNAR_STANDARD_VIEW_GET_CLASS (standard_view)->get_selected_items) (standard_view); get_selected_items is a function pointer which is set in thunar-abstract-icon-view.c to thunar_abstract_icon_view_get_selected_items which in turn calls static GList* thunar_abstract_icon_view_get_selected_items (ThunarStandardView *standard_view) { return exo_icon_view_get_selected_items (EXO_ICON_VIEW (GTK_BIN (standard_view)->child)); } Meaning this bug maybe is a bug in 'libexo-common'. I think more specifically in exo_icon_view_button_press_event in exo-icon-view.c, but I just can't seem to get any asserts, printfs or preemptive returns to work. I checked that thunar loads the newly compiled shared library with strace, but I still can't observe any changes ...
The selection seems to be done by GTK 2 with GTK_TREE_VIEW and GTK_SELECTION_MULTIPLE, that's why I didn't find anything in Thunar handling GDK_SHIFT_MASK. I don't think this feature isn't easily added inside Thunar, because while SELECTION_MULTIPLE is being done gtk_tree_view_get_path_at_pos (tree_view, event->x, event->y, &path, &column, NULL, NULL) doesn't seem to return a meaningful path which would be needed to set selections manually. Also we would need an anchor meaning the last selection in order to select all between. Actually exo_icon_view already seems to do this with exo_icon_view_button_press_event and exo_icon_view_select_all_between which is called from the first. If I read it correctly even Ctrl+Shift should work. So either Thunar uses exo_icon_view in thunar_details_view.c or it copies some of the source code, else this seems to be a GTK enhancement feature. I'm just a beginner, so neither seems doable for me, if such a change is even welcome. Also I'm not sure about anyhting I said ... Here is the bug in GTK I tried to open: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=762398
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