Hyperion Entertainment Message Boards

Does anyone tried the Workbench's functionality of selecting a file/folder by its letter using the keyboard ?

For example try to open a folder (SYS folder it's perfectly fine for this test) and then press the corresponding key in base of the name of the file (or the folder listed) you want to select

For example let's say we had these files in SYS:

Libs
System
Utilities
Kickstart

Now pressing "s" should select the System folder as soon as you press "s", then at this point if you want to select the Kickstart folder all you need to do is "unselect" the previous System folder (just by clicking somewhere) and press "k" instead
All seems logic ... however it doesn't always work as it should be !

The first click always work, but often a second click to another item doesn't work at all ... anyone from the betatesting group can repeat this simple test and eventually open a new ticket ?

My system is: AmigaOS 4.1 FE Update 1 (Workbench 53.53)

I just tried reproducing this on a clean 4.1 FE install here.

I can't.

I open the SYS drawer (by double-clicking the boot volume icon). Then I see the drawers Devs, Documentation, Emulation, Internet, MUI, Prefs, Storage, System, and Utilities.

I press P on the keyboard, the Prefs drawer flashes and remains selected. Then I press M, and the MUI drawer does the same, leaving Prefs unselected. Then I press E, and the Emulation drawer icon flashes and is selected. Etc, etc.

This works the same whether or not I use the mouse in between to "unselect", or not, BTW.

Best regards,

Niels

Yep i knew that there were no need to unselect things, just i though it was maybe better for our test .. aniway are you sure that it works at 100% ? ,,, yep rethorical question but please retry carefully ... apparently here it works aswell, but after 2 or 3 "key pressing" it stop working ..

Edit: Fixed typo

samo79 wrote:Yep i knew that there were no need to unselect things, just i though it was maybe better for our test .. aniway are you sure that it works at 100% ? ,,, yep rethorical question but please retry carefully ... apparently here it works aswell, but after 2 or 3 "testing clicks" it stop working ..

I did try it many times, not just the three I gave as example. I didn't notice any problems here.

BTW, you write "clicks"; just to be sure, you do mean key presses, right?

Best regards,

Niels

Ops yes sorry i meant key presses of course

i see a similar behavior here on my beta partition.
but even worse - only the very first keypress works. the next one doe not.
if i close the drawer and open it again - again only the first one works.
strange!
maybe let's try after a restart.

regards...
michael

I tried the procedure and got the same inconsistant results. If there are several filenames that start with the same letter, it will only ever select one of them (the same one) so it's really a useless feature as it stands.

xenic wrote:If there are several filenames that start with the same letter, it will only ever select one of them (the same one) so it's really a useless feature as it stands.

Not totally useless, I'd say. You can always move between the files using the cursor keys, so in a drawer with many files (sorted by name, of course), hitting a given letter will get you to or close to the one you want, with one or a few presses on the cursor keys to move the rest of the way.

Best regards,

Niels

BTW, I think I may have figured out what is going on.

If you have two icons with the same starting letter, and you hit that letter, Workbench picks one of them to highlight. Then you can hit the next letter of another matching one, and if you do it within a certain time limit, it will highlight that one. Otherwise it will highlight one matching the latest letter hit. In both cases, if the letter you hit doesn't give a match (either as second letter if within the time limit or as new first letter after the time limit), no reaction will be seen.

Example: In your standard WB SYS drawer, you have Devs, Documentation, and Emulation, among others. Now hit D; for me it highlights Documentation. If I hit E just afterwards, it shifts the highlight to Devs (which starts with "DE"). But if I (as another example) hit D to get Documentation highlighted, then wait a while (see later), and then hit E, it goes on to highlight Emulation. Finally, if I hit D, get Documentation highlighted, and then immediately hit e.g. P, nothing happens because it is still waiting for a match on the second letter after the D, which would be either E or O in our example (for Devs or Documentation - the latter being already highlighted anyway).

The time you have to wait in such a case is actually definable in Workbench Prefs, on the first tab, upper right section. It's called Restart delay. Mine's set to three seconds (which I believe to be the default).

Best regards,

Niels

The time you have to wait in such a case is actually definable in Workbench Prefs, on the first tab, upper right section. It's called Restart delay. Mine's set to three seconds (which I believe to be the default).

All right, now the behaviour is more or less clear, altrough i found this default setting (as 3 seconds) to be almost unlogical even considering how it works elsewhere ... how about set this as 1 second by default ?
Of course first would be interesting to know what other users think, if they are ok with that current default setting or if they prefer a quicker method to select files with keyboard, i'm for opening a ticket for change this