How to change the defaults for file highlighting?

[Theodore Kilgore]

On Sun, 29 Nov 2009, Andrew Borodin wrote:

> On Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:04:29 -0600 (CST) Theodore Kilgore wrote:
>> one feature which from my perspective is both useless and irritating,
>> especially since I became used to the opposite behavior for the
>> previous ten years of constant desktop use of MC.
>
> It's controversial issue. Something is useless for you, but that is
> useful for me. Previous ten years I used 2-step way to select all stuff
> in a directory: 1st step to select files and 2nd step to select
> directories. Now I can do that by one action.


Andrew,

And now what I became accustomed to do with one action I have to do with 
two :(

Most of the time, I want to deal with files, not with subdirectories. So 
from my point of view this is an irritating inconvenience. Worse. If I do 
not look twice, I ended up doing something that I really did not want to 
do, at all, and there may or may not be a way to undo it. Worst-case 
example:

I intend to delete a bunch of files and not at all to delete recursively 
the subdirectories. So, based upon years of habit, I highlight the files 
in order to delete them with F8. Oops. I forgot. They changed the way it 
works. I don't know why, but they did. The subdirectories are gone, too!

Luckily, I have not done this very often, and not to anything important. 
But the very idea that it _might_ happen is a recurring nightmare.

I mentioned what I think is an apt comparison some time ago: We own two 
cars with control mechanisms for the windshield wipers and the headlights 
which operate in a dangerously opposite manner. Now, the two cars are made 
by two different manufacturers. And each has its own idea about how to 
design things. So that is their excuse. But we don't have one.



>
>> If there is such an option, I have not succeeded in finding it.
>
> Since 11/18/2009 all options of "Select/Unselect group" dialog are
> saved in 'select_flags' ini option (see http://www.midnight-commander.org/ticket/1776).


Thanks for the reference. However, two questions:

1. Precisely to which version of the code does this patch pertain? I see 
there "4.70" and "4.70-pre4"

2. How will things be different after the patch, exactly? What happens 
right now is:

First time I open MC and do a highlighting, it by default marks 
everything, including directories. Then I have to tick the box for Files 
only, and it gets remembered for the entire session. I mean, if I later on 
do a highlighting again, my previous choice is remembered, though not 
recorded anywhere that I can find.

So from what I understand you have now made this more permanent by 
providing a tie-in to the ini file?

If so, then that's great. We can all be happy.

Theodore Kilgore