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Directory Opus 10

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Nudel:
DOpus 10 was released more than four years after DOpus 9, yet it has not much in the way of new features; mostly improvements in its existing features.-J-Mac (September 19, 2011, 01:33 PM)
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Have we read the same release notes? :-)

My opinion is obviously not unbiased (given that my name is in the About dialog these days :)), but I can't think of much other software where updates add the amount of changes that Opus 10 added.

Of course, if all the changes happen to be things that don't really interest you then it won't seem like a big update, but I think there are a lot of changes in Opus 10, many of which a lot of people had asked for. I think there has been a positive response to the update.


However the number of bugs in DOpus 10 - and I am speaking of more than just my own recent rants here - seems disproportionate with the time they had to get this version ready.
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I guess we need better beta testers. :) I don't think there are many bugs left now, though.


All I know is that this version is still giving me fits and taking up hours on some days to try and get something done
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Can you point me to the support or forum threads about that?


and I purchased and installed the DO10 upgrade on 1-May-2011! That's almost five months and for the most part the advice I get is "try installing the newest beta and see if that helps". Grrr...
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I can only apologise if the issue you've been seeing hasn't been investigated properly, but without knowing which issue/thread we're talking about I can't investigate (or explain) further. Let me know and I'll look into it.

tomos:
Dopus 10.5 has been released.
These are the things that stood out for me:


* Interface improvements, in particular tabs & tab groups -
I dont use tab groups but might give them a go now (use lister layouts myself).
* Some options to make tabs act more customisable (like in browsers)
* I can add custom names to lister layouts
* Tree highlighted to show where you're at
* Control + mouse wheel can now be used to change font and thumbnail size
In Thumbnails mode, turning the mouse wheel while holding the Control key down lets you adjust the size of the thumbnails. [doesnt work here yet (will report)]
* Win 8 fixes
I'm always happy to see interface improvments, and there's some interesting ones here. Unfortunatley no viewer improvements.

full details:
http://gpsoft.com.au/help/opus10/default.htm#!Documents/Changes/10500.htm

clean:
I know many people here like DO a lot, and I see that both it's "pretty", and that you can do a lot with it. But then, I have never ever understood why there isn't one single of these "big shots" in file M (= DO, FB, SC, TC, X2, XY - these are in alphabetic order here) to offer more than just two panes in one screen / instance / "window" / whatever. To my knowledge, there isn't but that ugly, MS-like free thing (I looked it up for you, it's "Q-Dir", with up to 4 panes), without any serious functionality that offers 3 or even more than 3, but the combination "good functionality, professional offering, and more than just 2 panes" isn't available anywhere.

Why would this be so important? Because many users (= me included, but it's far from an "exotic" wish) often do a lot of "distribution" of files, from a "source" directory, into several other, target, folders, often with photos (if it had correct functionality here, XY would be ideal for that because of its rather new photo preview pane) and doing this by mouse is very stressing to any developing or outgrown "mouse arm".

So, "put selected item into pane 2/3/4", by respective key-assigned commands, would be a big relief (and would be a much faster workflow even for people who don't have any "mouse problems" (yet)) for lots of actual use of a file manager, but this would imply the intro of a third and fourth pane to begin with.

And yes, you could do it in a similar way with tabs, so additional panes ain't really necessary, for this (while coming certainly very handy for multi-source-mult-target shifting around of files), but then, commands for copying and / or moving the selected file in the active pane or tab, to the directory in tab 2/3/4 (let alone further ones) are NOT AVAILABLE in any of these more or less expensive (and otherwise, quite good) "major" file commanders.

So we have LACKING CORE FUNCTIONALITY in any of those, and that means, why should you buy the most expensive of them, when even that one isn't any better in this very important respect, even dozens of years after its creation?

So there's room for big improvement here, with DO, and with more reasonably priced competitors.

Let me add that of course I asked for such features, in vain, before complaining to third parties.

Or then, explain to me why I'd be totally wrong again, by asking for features that should have been available for the last 15 years.

Dormouse:
ShellLess Explorer lets you have as many open panels as you want (though I've not checked recent versions, it always used to advertise this as a major feature).

I liked it and do like being able to have multiple panes open, though none of the main file manager developers seem to like the idea. In practice, I found I was quite happy with Q-Dir for quick and easy portable use and liked having the power & configurability of DO for everything else. With Actual Windows 'Keep on top' option, it is easy to make any file manager work for me as if it has multi-pane options - but then I only want to use it manually using a mouse.

40hz:
Or then, explain to me why I'd be totally wrong again, by asking for features that should have been available for the last 15 years.
-clean (February 08, 2013, 09:12 AM)
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The features are available. But apparently it was the people that wrote Directory Opus who saw the potential and put in the time to write a program that provides them. And they (correctly IMO) guessed that those people who truly wanted - or actually needed - those features would be willing to buy D-Opus. Everybody else would just make do with whatever else they could get.

And so far, it looks like they were right about that.

I admire D-Opus. I would love to own a copy. But I really can't justify paying $69 for the amount of use I'd get out of it - or for those rare times when I definitely could benefit from some of the unique "power user" features it supports. That's just the way it goes sometimes. YMMV.

So in answer to your question why should you buy something like that - the simple answer is because it seems to be the only way you're going to be able to get it. Nobody is under any obligation to write software just because somebody else wants it. Most programs are born out of a personal desire or need for something that doesn't exist. When that happens to somebody with sufficient coding skills, a new app sometimes gets written. But that doesn't obligate the coder to share, or even sell it, if they don't want to.

C'est la vie. Try not to let it get you too frustrated. :)

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