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unimplemented behaviour when using ctrl+shift+click to select multiple files
Status:
RESOLVED: MOVED
Severity:
enhancement

Comments

Description turerkan 2009-05-05 22:52:35 CEST
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.
Comment 1 Sebastian Krämer 2011-07-02 09:59:35 CEST
Yes, I'm missing this too. It's a little unexpected since everywhere else it's working that way I think.
Comment 2 Helder 2015-01-07 23:52:33 CET
Still reproducible on Thunar 1.6.3.
Comment 3 xyzdr4gon333 2016-02-21 01:54:55 CET
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.
Comment 4 xyzdr4gon333 2016-02-21 05:22:47 CET
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 ...
Comment 5 xyzdr4gon333 2016-02-21 13:36:44 CET
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
Comment 6 Git Bot editbugs 2020-05-26 23:08:03 CEST
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Bug #5333

Reported by:
turerkan
Reported on: 2009-05-05
Last modified on: 2020-05-26

People

Assignee:
Jannis Pohlmann
CC List:
5 users

Version

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Additional information