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From: sk@thp.uni-koeln.de (Sebastian Kremer)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.sources
Subject: Tree Dired available
Message-ID: <9101281430.AA20012@sun0.thp.Uni-Koeln.DE>
Date: 28 Jan 91 14:30:17 GMT
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Distribution: gnu
Organization: Source only  Discussion and requests in gnu.emacs.help.
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Since Chris Ward <cward@mordor.dseg.ti.com> has just posted his
enhanced Dired and Martin Maechler <maechler@breeze.bellcore.com> had
enquired (in gnu.emacs.bug) about future Dired plans for the next
Emacs release, I'd like to mention that I am currently beta-testing a
new version of dired.  [I had posted a reply to Martin's article, but
apperently it did not make it out.]

I have already given copyright of this in writing to the FSF.
Probably RMS will include it in the next Emacs release.

Features are:

    * Tree Dired (ls -lR allowed and insertion of subdirectories in
      situ - just type `i' on a directory line to expand it into the
      current buffer).

      Commands to hide some or all subdirectories, leaving only their
      header lines (like outline mode).

      Moving commands to traverse the tree, to quickly go to the next
      file that is a directory or to a specific file by name.

    * marking of files for later commands (all dired commands work on
      lists of marked files or the next prefix ARG files and default
      to the current file, so this is fully backward compatible.)

    * arbitrary shell commands on files, optionally in the background

    * renaming by regexp (with \<n> and \& allowed like in replace-regexp)

    * marking by regexp

    * marking by file type (directory/symlink/executable) in addition
      to the usual marking of backup or auto-save files

    * diffing files

    * sorting on name or date

    * copy/move of single or marked files into a directory

    * spaces in filenames allowed

    * `F', `i' and `s' in dired-listing-switches allowed

    * and many little enhancements/fixes.

It also works much better with ange-ftp.  In fact, there is hardly any
difference between local and remote directories in Dired now.
[ange-ftp is an Emacs lisp package that makes Emacs work with remote
files using ftp.  It uses a filename syntax like rcp:
/user@host:/absolute/path or /user@host:relative/to/your/home/dir.
A recent version of ange-ftp.el is included in dired-ange.shar.]

I have been watching discussions about Dired in the Emacs-related
newsgroups and think all features that were being discussed are
present in my dired.  All bugs that were mentioned are fixed or have
vanished due to the major rewrite.

From quickly looking over Chris Ward's code I have the impression that
his "multi commands" correspond to my "file marking".

The major difference between this version of dired and others is that
it is possible to have a whole directory tree (or part of it) in one
Dired buffer.  You can either add `R' to your listing switches or
include directories one by one by typing `i' on them as you go along.

Unlike Monkey Mode, this is fully backward compatible to standard
Dired: a naive Dired user should have no problems in using Tree Dired.

Dired buffers know about each other, so that moving or copying files
around updates all concerned Dired buffers (and file buffers if a
visited file is renamed).

A version of my dired is available for anonymous ftp from

  ftp.cs.buffalo.edu:pub/Emacs/

  	dired.shar		Required (100k)
	dired-extra.shar	Optional extra features (20k)
	dired-ange.shar		Optional ange-ftp support (70k)
	dired-txt		discussions from the beta tester list (40k)
	diredall.tar.Z		All of the above (90k)

(It will take a week or so until the latest version (5.15) will be
available in buffalo.  Currently version 4.53 is still there and the
last two files are not yet available.)

"Extra" Dired features include minibuffer history for dired shell
commands (including my gmhist - generic minibuffer history - package,
which I will re-post soon), VM or RMAIL on folder, and dynamic marker
characters.  Release 5.15 also can selectively omit files (such as
backup, object and other uninteresting files) from the listing.

--
Sebastian Kremer <sk@thp.Uni-Koeln.DE>
Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, F. R. of Germany

