Author Topic: FARR plugin: FARR Most Recently Used 1.0.0 (Read 103988 times)

phitsc · « **on:** July 01, 2008, 07:15 AM »

Description
The FARR MostRecentlyUsed plugin shows the contents of the 'My Recent Documents' folder or a list of most recently used files of applications storing their most recently used files in the registry.

Screenshot - 7_9_2008 , 9_29_41 PM.png

Download
You can get it from here: http://farrplugins.o...MostRecentlyUsed.zip

Usage
Use the following aliases to give you a list of your most recently used files:
- mru : Shows a simple menu with the below aliases - mrum : Shows files in your 'My Recent Documents' (XP) or 'Recent Items' (Vista, but see known issues) folder - mrup : Shows files of configured programs, storing their MRU files in the registry - mrua : Show a combined list of files out of mrum and mrup - mruu : Show files from selected groups only (selectable in the options dialog) - mrul : Show a list of installed and supported applications for further selection

Use the following modifier keywords to change the search:
+byname : Force sorting by name +bydate : Force sorting by date last accessed +bymod : Force sorting by date last modified +bycreate : Force sorting by date created +.[ext] : Filter results by file extension [ext]. More than one can be used, e.g. +.h +.cpp

To show a list of most recently used files for selected applications, use the following modifiers:
+acrobat : Adobe Acrobat Reader (only 9 currently) +akelpad : Akelpad +audacity : Audacity +dwcs3   : Dreamweaver CS3 +foxit : Foxit Reader +icofx : IcoFX (only 1.6 currently) +km : KMPlayer +msvc8 : MS Visual Studio 2005 +msvc9 : MS Visual Studio 2008 +npp : Notepad++ +office3 : Microsoft Office 2003 +office7 : Microsoft Office 2007 +oo2 : OpenOffice 2.0 +paint : Paint +photoe : Photoshop Elements (only 5.0 currently) +snag : SnagIt +sql : SQL Server +ted : TED Notepad +winrar : WinRAR +winuae : WinUAE +wmp : Windows Media Player +wordpad : Wordpad

(built-in group for My Recent Documents)
+recent : My Recent Documents

See readme.txt for options and details.

Version history
1.0.0
- Added / Changed the following applications:
  - Added Visio 2007 to Office 2007 (+office7)

0.5.1
- Modifier entries in FarrMostRecentlyUsed.user now override identical ones in FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config.
- Added / Changed the following applications:
  - Added Akelpad (+akelpad) *
  - Added Audacity (+audacity) *
  - Added icon path for TED Notepad *
  - Added icon path for WinRAR *
  - Added icon path for WinUAE *

0.5.0
- Added support for mru items specified in .ini files
- Added new alias mrul which gives a list of supported and installed applications
- User defined result list option now only shows installed applications
- Added / Changed the following applications:
  - Added Dreamweaver CS3 (+dwcs3) *
  - Added IcoFX 1.6 (+icofx)
  - Changed +oo to +oo2 (in expectance of OpenOffice 3)

0.4.0
- Added icons to the simple menu (thanks hamradio!)
- Added support for the following applications:
  - Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 (+acrobat)
  - Notepad++ (+npp)
  - OpenOffice 2 (+oo)

0.3.0
- Added simple menu (type mru)
- Added special aliases:
  - mrum (My Recent Documents)
  - mrup (Recent Application documents)
  - mrua (All recent documents)
  - mruu (User selected groups of applications / My Recent Documents)
- Much improved filtering and sorting
- Show icons for UNC files
- Added FarrMostRecentlyUsed.user config file. Like FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config, but will never be overwritten.

0.2.0
- Added check for file existence for local files. UNC paths are currently never checked for existence.
- Added MRU specifications for:
  - Microsoft Office 2003 (+office3) *
  - Photoshop Elements (+photoe) *
  - KMPlayer (+km) *
  - SnagIt (+snag) *
  - SQL Server (+sql) *
  - Paint (+paint)
  - TED Notepad (+ted) *
  - WinRAR (+winrar) *
  - WinUAE (+winuae) *
  - Wordpad (+wordpad) *
- Renamed modifier for Microsoft Office 2007 to '+office7'

* Note that I did not test these myself, please report if they don't work.

0.1.0
- initial release

phitsc · « **Reply #1 on:** July 01, 2008, 07:25 AM »

Concerning showing most recently used files for selected applications:
These are configured in a config file (see readme.txt). I've added the ones I found in my registry. As you can see, the amount of applications I'm using seems to be fairly limited

. It's easy to add you own applications though and I encourage everyone to post registry paths to the MRU lists of their favourite applications here so I can add them to the config file.

How to find MRU lists the FARR MRU plugin can handle:
Start regedit.exe and search for MRU or recent. If you find a key that contains values named File1, File2, File3, etc. (or something similar, like Item 1, Item 2, Item 3, etc.) select the respective key and then Copy Key Name in the context menu. Then paste that into to the FarrMostRecentlyUsed.config file.

TucknDar · « **Reply #2 on:** July 01, 2008, 08:16 AM »

Love the idea, but can't get it to work.

Typing 'mru' in FARR does nothing, for some reason. I'm using FARR 2.12.03 with XP Home sp2.

I've tried quitting and restarting FARR, but to no avail. Any idea what may be causing this? I'll be happy to provide more info of course!

czb · « **Reply #3 on:** July 01, 2008, 08:23 AM »

It works fine here. FARR 2.12.03, Windows XP SP3

Great work

TucknDar · « **Reply #4 on:** July 01, 2008, 08:29 AM »

I should add that I've checked in the registry that there are entries for apps specified in the config, so it's not that there's just no results

czb · « **Reply #5 on:** July 01, 2008, 08:41 AM »

Could you implement a way to add any of installed programs like PSPAD, Netbeans etc. ?

mouser · « **Reply #6 on:** July 01, 2008, 09:06 AM »

Showing entries from the mru list has been one of the most requested features for farr..
It's fantastic to have a plugin that does this.

Plus it works great.

Love this one.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #7 on:** July 01, 2008, 09:08 AM »

czechboy: For that, i think you need to find out where those lists are saved

mouser · « **Reply #8 on:** July 01, 2008, 09:10 AM »

This may be a very good candidate for something you would want to display in the farr window as soon as farr is shown, instead of the default list of last programs launched by far. you can do this if you want by going to the hotkeys configuration in far and either modifying the hotkey trigger of choice (Break key) or adding a new one, and specifying mru as the text for the search edit box.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #9 on:** July 01, 2008, 09:15 AM »

I just had a brilliant idea!!

People: when you post a link to an app, please post the link for its .dcupdate file too. Then, we can click it, and install if from dcupdater, which is much nicer than unpacking the .zip file into the farr directory

The good advantage about this, is that you don't have to update the .dcupdate file, because who downloads it will always chose to "install latest version from the web"

jgpaiva

dcupdater

mouser · « **Reply #10 on:** July 01, 2008, 09:15 AM »

Just discovered and tried the ability to specify additional registry keys with +modifiers, like +office.
WOW that is so cool.

An idea:
maybe the first entry in the config file could be like:

[Select]

+|DefaultMRU
list of reg keys to check and show by default

that way a user who wanted to could modify the list of reg keys that got checked for the default mru display, and could even add reg keys from certain programs they wanted to show by default.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #11 on:** July 01, 2008, 09:23 AM »

Ok.. The mru for acrobat is a bit different.. It's located under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\8.0\AVGeneral\cRecentFiles. But the problem is that it stores the entries under keys named c# (where # is a number), and then those have values named "tDIText" that store the path.
Oh, and the path looks like this: "/D/Ist/_Current/CM/Apresentação/18-automatic-partitioning.pdf" (which is even more stupid

).
Would it be possible to get this to work for acrobat?
If not, no biggie

CWuestefeld · « **Reply #12 on:** July 01, 2008, 09:30 AM »

For your MRUing pleasure, here are some I got from my system:

[Select]

+km|KMPlayer
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\KMPlayer\LastViewFile

+snag|SnagIt
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TechSmith\SnagIt\8\Recent Captures

+sql|SQL Server
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell\ProjectMRUList

+msdn|MSDN
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSDN\8.0\WebBrowser\MRU
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSDN\9.0\WebBrowser\MRU

However, a couple of others I tried didn't work as expected:

Trying to do it for EverNote, I got a crash.

[Select]

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\EverNote\EverNote\Recent Document List

I thought this would work for IE, but get no results:

[Select]

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\TypedURLs

And these for the MSDN library didn't behave as expected:

[Select]

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSDN\8.0\WebBrowser\MRU
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MSDN\9.0\WebBrowser\MRU

jgpaiva · « **Reply #13 on:** July 01, 2008, 09:36 AM »

This may be a very good candidate for something you would want to display in the farr window as soon as farr is shown, instead of the default list of last programs launched by far. you can do this if you want by going to the hotkeys configuration in far and either modifying the hotkey trigger of choice (Break key) or adding a new one, and specifying mru as the text for the search edit box.
-mouser (July 01, 2008, 09:10 AM)

Visual Guide:

FARR plugin: FARR Most Recently Used 1.0.0

FARR plugin: FARR Most Recently Used 1.0.0

PS: mouser: in SC v2.37.01, saving a file after adding a shape to it results in crazy failure, on my vista64.

mouser · « **Reply #14 on:** July 01, 2008, 09:41 AM »

PS: mouser: in SC v2.37.01, saving a file after adding a shape to it results in crazy failure, on my vista64.

This x64 crashing was fixed in an unreleased beta of SC; my plan was that as soon as i catch a break from FARR i would update SC, but maybe i need to release a bugfix for x64 users sooner rather than later. See here for unannounced download of x64 fixed version: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=13525.0

jgpaiva · « **Reply #15 on:** July 01, 2008, 10:08 AM »

Ok, i'll update

TucknDar · « **Reply #16 on:** July 01, 2008, 11:18 AM »

OK, been trying a bit more, and the plugin does work on my end to. I had to change the office MRUs to Office2003, which worked. So part of the problem was right there between my chair and keyboard...

But I thought just typing 'mru' would bring a complete list? Are only files from the "recent folder" shown? I guess I'll have to do without, since it seems the shell replacement I'm using (LiteStep) doesn't use this like explorer.exe. Both +office and +foxit works and I'm sure other similar will work too, though, so I guess I can make an alias to bring the results I'd like most

Great plugin!

TucknDar · « **Reply #17 on:** July 01, 2008, 11:24 AM »

btw many of the file extensions in the ComdDlg32\OpenSaveMRU key are very useful to me, such as:

[Select]

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\OpenSaveMRU\doc
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\OpenSaveMRU\xls

nitrix-ud · « **Reply #18 on:** July 01, 2008, 02:22 PM »

seems like a great plugins

i did not manage to make it work for photoshop MRU
+photoshop|Photoshop
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\MediaBrowser\MRU\Photoshop\FileList

it is not entries like office though...
see capture

jgpaiva · « **Reply #19 on:** July 01, 2008, 02:32 PM »

nitrix: doesn't look like there's any path to a file.. If there was one in any of those folders, it might be possible to get them..

phitsc · « **Reply #20 on:** July 01, 2008, 02:42 PM »

First: Thanks for all the compliments!

Second a clarification:
FARR MRU currently shows either the contents of the 'My Recent Documents' (XP) resp. 'Recent Items' (Vista, but see remark in readme.txt) folder or the most recently used files of one or more applications specified by modifiers. I.e. if you just type mru, you'll get only 'My Recent Documents', if you add something like +msvc9, you'll get only the most recently used Visual Studio 9 files. You could then add +office and would get all MSVC9 files plus all Office files, but you currently can't get them in the same list as your 'My Recent Documents' files.

To the suggestions:

Could you implement a way to add any of installed programs like PSPAD, Netbeans etc. ?

They can be added already if they store their mru files in the registry in the format as described in the readme.txt.

An idea:
maybe the first entry in the config file could be like:
Code:

+|DefaultMRU
list of reg keys to check and show by default

that way a user who wanted to could modify the list of reg keys that got checked for the default mru display, and could even add reg keys from certain programs they wanted to show by default.

The idea being that they would be merged into the 'My Recent Documents' result list? Yes, that would be an idea. I was also thinking about a modifier that would list all of the configured applications mru files. I think that would serve the FARR filtering idea better.

The mru for acrobat is a bit different

I'll maybe look into it. Uh, that means I need to install Adobe Acrobat Reader, nooooo.

For your MRUing pleasure, here are some I got from my system

I'll add the ones you say they work and check out the others if I can.

I had to change the office MRUs to Office2003

Would you mind posting the Office 2003 registry paths here. I don't have Office 2003 installed but would like to add those.

btw many of the file extensions in the ComdDlg32\OpenSaveMRU key are very useful to me

These would actually already work in 0.1.0, provided your running Windows XP. Apart from mru registry entries of the form 'File 1', 'File 2', etc. I have also implemented the ones which use a MRUList value with a, b, c, etc. I haven't seen anything other than explorer use it though. And in Windows Vista Microsoft changed these to MRUListEx with no clear-text paths, but some binary data. Additionally, you would currently need to specify each registry key individually, i.e. something like:

[Select]

+explorer|Windows Explorer
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\OpenSavelMRU\*
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\OpenSavelMRU\doc
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\OpenSavelMRU\xls
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\OpenSavelMRU\zip

just as some examples, you would need to add all which are relevant to you. Obviously, it would be better if FARR MRU would scan everything underneath HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\OpenSavelMRU\.

i did not manage to make it work for photoshop MRU

I have Photoshop Elements. I'll check it out.

Thanks for all your feedback and suggestions! I'm always open to more suggestions to make this plugin more useful.

mouser · « **Reply #21 on:** July 01, 2008, 02:52 PM »

The idea being that they would be merged into the 'My Recent Documents' result list? Yes, that would be an idea.

right, which would also let people who always wanted their office files shown in main mru list do that, and add any such entries to the main mru list.

I was also thinking about a modifier that would list all of the configured applications mru files. I think that would serve the FARR filtering idea better.

that would also be a good idea; you can do that by deteced when user types mrua
and return a result list like
mru office | restartsearch mru +office
mru foxit pdf reader| restartsearch mru +foxit
that essentially lets you make a menu of choices for the user that farr will present

Lashiec · « **Reply #22 on:** July 01, 2008, 05:28 PM »

It's an interesting idea, and it will save a few clicks in the Start Menu. I'll try a few of the MRUs I use with CCleaner, and report back with the results. BTW, are you planning to add an interface to input new MRUs directly from the plugin config window?

czechboy: I'm afraid there's no way to add PSPad's MRUs as they're stored in a text file instead of the registry.

Lashiec · « **Reply #23 on:** July 01, 2008, 06:23 PM »

Sorry for the double post, but it's less clutter for one post

[Select]

;This can be used as a starting point to write one focused in the entire Office 2003 suite

+excel|Excel Viewer 2003
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel Viewer\Recent Files

;The Microsoft Management Console entry seems to change depending of your OS language, so adjust the "Microsoft Management Console" enclosed
;between \\ accordingly (in Spanish is "Consola de administración de Microsoft", for example)

+mmc|Microsoft Management Console
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Management Console\Recent File List

+paint|Paint
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\Paint\Recent File List

+ted|TED Notepad
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Medvedik\TedNPad5\Recent

+winrar|WinRAR
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinRAR\ArcHistory

;An Amiga emulator, for those wondering

+winuae|WinUAE
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Arabuusimiehet\WinUAE\DiskImageMRUList

+wordpad|Wordpad
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\Wordpad\Recent File List

Those which failed, for analysis of the author:

[Select]

;The text editor included with xplorer², I think it fails because of the "DocumentEntry" value at the end of the list

+editor2|editor²
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ZabaraKatranemia Plc\Editor2\Recent Document List

;It's a value, so it does not get anything, the MRU entries for Paint.NET are stored value by value, together with the rest of the configuration values for the program

+paintnet|Paint.NET
RegKey1=HKCU\Software\Paint.NET|MRU0

;Each line starts with "1," before the complete path to the file

+quicktime|QuickTime Player
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Apple Computer, Inc.\QuickTime\Recent Movies

And that's it, there are not as many as I thought...

czb · « **Reply #24 on:** July 01, 2008, 11:19 PM »

czechboy[/b]: I'm afraid there's no way to add PSPad's MRUs as they're stored in a text file instead of the registry.
-Lashiec (July 01, 2008, 05:28 PM)

it does not matter. I am switching to netbeans anyway since it has much higher level support for javascript