[jwerlend]

what about making each folders settings saveable... like in windows when you can have detailed, listed and so on.
let's say you have a folder pictures and different subfolder with different topics like friends, family and so on. it would be great if there were an option to save the pictures folder as a listing thingy, and the family with big icons / icons.

it would be cool if you could the icons of the pictures folder could consist of 4 randomly selected and minimized pictures..

hmm... not very good explained, but i hope you understand it.
if not, please let me know

[MortUK]

great idea.!! something i'd like to see too.!!

each folder had it's own view,

e.g. you could browse your movies by catagory as a list, then when you select the category, they are displayed by icon/dvd cover.

is that what you meant..?

[PFunk]

i find myself looking at the album level views in thumbnail mode so i can see the cool album art, but when i navigate to within the folder itself, i change to list mode when viewing the song titles. it would be great if you could tell xmbc to remember the setting of each page in the app similar to how you can use it in windows explorer.

[Weavus]

it would be really good if xbmc remembered the view type of specific directories rather than always using the currently selected one.

i like to view directories of television series video files in list format but the directory of television series directories in big icon mode with thumbnails.

[SearchFor]

you are right the first part is already implemented to some extent but i would like to see it extended

what do you think of:

per-folder setting that are saved
so that it is remembered how a folder was/should be displayed, of course you would need to have a default for every folder so all folders don't have to have a definition but also customizable so for example an "folderssettings.xml" for storing default settings for all folders and appended to as the user changes settings for other folders:

sorry but the code samples are displayed without indentation as intended

so for example this would be a default/required setting

<folder setting>
<hierarchy>"my movies"</hierarchy>
<display_files>.avi|.ogm|.mkv</display_files>
<not_displayed_text>-cd1|xvid|brutus|.avi|.ogm|.mkv</filtered_text>
<sort_by>name</sort_by>
<view>"big icons"</view>
<stack>yes</stack>
<file_number_idenifier>*-cd#.</file_number_identifier>
<series>no</series>(see support for tv episode folders)
<display_files_sizes>no</displayfiles_sizes>
<display_files_dates>yes</displayfiles_dates>
<big_title>"the movies"<big_title>
<subs folder>e:\subs|\\solar\subs</subs folder>
<cache subs>yes</cache subs>
</folder setting>

and for a specific folder "\\server\tv\simpsons\season1"

<folder setting>
<hierarchy>\\server\tv\simpsons\season1</hierarchy>
<display_files>.mpg</display_files>
<not_displayed_text>"the simpsons"|dvdrip|.avi</not_displayed_text>
<view>"list"</view>
<sort_by>episode_number</sort_by>
<stack>no</stack>
<series>yes</series>
<display_synopsys>yes</display_synopsys>
<episode_number_idenifier>e## </episode_number_identifier>
<season_number_idenifier> s##</season_number_identifier>
<display_files_sizes>no</displayfiles_sizes>
<display_files_dates>no</displayfiles_dates>
<big_title>"the simpsons - season one"<big_title>
</folder setting>

so if the folder is browsed in "my movies" it will default to the

<hierarchy>"my movies"</hierarchy>

settings but if the folders is \\server\tv\simpsons\season1 and

<hierarchy>\\server\tv\simpsons\season1</hierarchy>

settings exist then use them instead.

to start with this could simply be to store the settings that are definable atm (stacking, view, sort by, folder image) but could allow developers to add new display settings types later on e.g some of the ones in the above code examples

<not_displayed_text>

a particular implementation would allow the user to define view settings via a dialogue box and this could be as well as or instead of the buttons on the left.

i’m not sure how big an effect this will have on the skins but i think it would be minimal dependeing on what features are implemented

i think this feature would allow for other features to be implemented easier

[Kain]

i really like the idea, that way u could choose, stack or unstack for each folder too. that way in simpsons season 1 folder all episodes would not be stacked and yet in ur other folders u would be able to have ur mulli file movies stacked. see what i mean. :kickass:

[nle]

id like the option to save the viewstate on my folders. kind of like the "remember each folders view settings" in windows.

since ive started using folder.jpgs this has become an issue for me. some lists i want with the smallicon setting. other i want as plain lists. using the iconview in some places makes it really hard to get an overview of what is presented on the screen. and its really frustrating needing to change the view all the time.

scenario:
list of moviedrives as list. choose a drive and i want to stay in listmode when i choose my category (divx/svcd). choose divx and i want it to be small icon vew since i have thumbnails for all the movies. when i enter a moviedir i want it to be list again.

anyone else think this is a good idea or is it just me?

[jmarshall]

there's an auto-switch feature which will do this pretty much. you can set the percentage of thumbs to trigger a switch to the thumbs view for instance.

this will be in when the new settings screens are complete (a week or so)

[Loto_Bak]

i run into this when sorting files by date (for pvr recording tv) then navigating to other directories that need to be sorted by name. xbmc maintains the same sorting method through the whole bookmark.

preferably having xbmc store how each directory was last sorted ala windows with 'remember each folders view settings' enabled

[kraqh3d]

i've thought of this and had an idea if anyone wants to code it up. it's rather simple actually.

for those who dont know, in files view, a set of variables are used to identify the current "view as" (list, thumb, etc), the "sort by" (name, date, etc), and the ascending/descending options. but they are window variables so they stay fixed. currently, the closest thing we have is the autoswitching which set the "view as" option based on some rules. what we need is to store these variables everytime they are changed along with the current directory, and then to retrieve them when the directory re-visited.

to accomplish this, i was thinking a database would work nicely. i think it would offer better performance than keeping the info in an xml file. the schema would be rather simple:

- index, generic numeric index field
- type, string field allowing "music","video","pictures","files" so that the same directory can be saved uniquely if its in more than one media window
- path, string field presenting the directory
- viewas, numeric field
- sortby, numeric field
- ascending, boolean field

a default set of values would need to be defined and used for "new" paths which dont exist in the database yet. then everytime one of these three options is changed, the values are stored back to the database to the matching type and path combination.

of course, this would overrule the autoswitching code so they would need to be made mutually exclusive. if the user enables "save settings per folder", then autoswitch would need to be disabled.

[Loto_Bak]

idealy this view would be independent of all windows (music/video/pics/files whatever) and apply to file view under any section.

thanks for taking a look kraq :o

re affini's request, it is more of a video specific request and would never apply to pictures, music, or the file manager. hopefully we'll have a library in videos sooner or later and then all this stacking will be taken care of there. damn videos and their lack of meta-data :veryangry:

[jmarshall]

i recall taking a look at this ages ago. there's a couple of outline classes sitting in settings.h/cpp for folder views. i was initially gonna do .xml, but i think kraqh3d's idea of a .db view would be simpler and faster.

cheers,
jonathan

[kraqh3d]

idealy this view would be independent of all windows (music/video/pics/files whatever) and apply to file view under any section.

that would be the plan. thats why i suggest marking each folder with a type field. this allows the settings of overlapping bookmarks between windows to be kept independant of each other.

thanks for taking a look kraq

you've misunderstood me... i dont have the time to implement this. for the moment, home and work are my proriorities. however, as i have have thought about this in the past, i posted may plans in the hopes someone would give it a try.

i quote myself from my original reply:

i've thought of this and had an idea if anyone wants to code it up.

the main problem with affini's request is that its folder specific. highly variable folder specific options like that are difficult to keep track of within xbmc. though, since it only applied to files view, a simple way to accomplish something this would be for xbmc to look in the current folder for a rules.xml file. this file would specifies the name transformations in regexp form for the folder where its located. and if a local rules.xml does not exist, then the standard regexps would be consulted.

[kraqh3d]

if anyone is attempting to add this, also add "bstack" to the database to save the stack setting per folder as well.

[ccalabro]

Firstly let me say how grateful I am for this community...

along with everyone else i am sure who has their video media organised into various areas, one feature that i think would be nice is for a custom view available for each share. example; my tv series are all in 1 folder, have the nice folder icon so you want the big icon view to select the series, you then want to be able to click on a series and get list view as each item in the series is the same. however when you drill into movies you want to be able to keep the big icon view to see the individual tbn images etc.

perhaps this could be implemented in the user xml file to overide the global settings...

thanks again for everyones input.

CC