KDE Disk Navigator <author>Pietro Iglio (<htmlurl url="mailto:iglio@kde.org" name="iglio@kde.org">) <date>v. 0.3 (beta), Nov 17 15:45:00 1998  <toc>   <sect>Introduction  Disk Navigator is a simple utility to navigate through the filesystem starting from the KPanel menu. It is activated when the "Disk Navigator" entry from the KPanel menu is selected. In this case, a menu with the following entries is shown: <list> <item><bf>Shared:</bf> this section lists entries shared among all users. Typical shared entries include: / (root dir), CD-ROM, mounted filesystems, removable disks, etc. Shared entries can be changed selecting the "Options" menu entry. Note: only the superuser can change shared entries. <item><bf>Personal:</bf> this section lists user-specific filesystem entries. Typical entries in this section are user's home dir, user's desktop, frequently accessed directories. Personal entries can be changed selecting the "Options" menu entry. <item><bf>Recent:</bf> this section lists recently accessed documents, applications and folders. When a document or application is accessed, it goes in the "Recent" section along with its parent folder. The number of folders and files that are kept in this section can be set selecting the "Options" menu entry. <item><bf>Options:</bf> shows a configuration dialog that can be used to specify some settings. For a description of available settings, see the "Options" Section. </list> The Disk Navigator menu is easily customizable to fit user needs, as explained in the section "Adding, Changing and Removing Filesystem Entries".  <sect>Features & Tips  <list> <item> On the top of each folder submenu there is an entry "Open Folder". When this entry is selected, a KFM window referring to the current folder is displayed. If you hold down the Shift key when selecting this entry, Disk Navigator opens a terminal with the current directory corresponding to the folder submenu. <item> Disk Navigator can be used to quickly access files in any mounted filesystem, including local files, remote files (eg. NFS mounts), removable media (CD-ROM, Iomega Zip, floppy drive), etc. You can create folders in the Disk Navigator menu to group related filesystem entries (eg. "Remote Filesystems", "Removable Media", "Development Stuff", etc.). <item> When you click on a file in a folder submenu, the action performed is exactly the same performed when the file is clicked in a KFM window. <item> Slow devices: accessing a folder on a slow device can stop Disk Navigator for a while (eg. entering a folder with a large number of files on a slow CD-ROM reader). Since you may want to place entry points to slow devices on the root menu, you might accidentally enter such slow entries. To avoid this problem, you can add a "Removable Media" folder to the Shared/Personal sections, and create URL files or links pointing to the slow devices in this folder. See the "Options" section to see how to customize the Shared/Personal sections. <item> URL vs. Links: starting version 0.3, Disk Navigator supports KDE URL files to define filesystem entry points. Disk Navigator, in particular, supports local aliases, i.e. URL files referring to local files (not, for instance, ftp URLs). For more information, see section "Adding, Changing and Removing Filesystem Entries". Currently, you can use both URL files and filesystem links (hard or symbolic). Using symbolic links, however, can be source of problems if you try to make a copy of the KDE directory using the <tt>-r</tt> option of the <tt>cp</tt> command (recursive copy). Linux users can get rid of such problem using the <tt>-d</tt> option in conjunction with <tt>-r</tt> so that <tt>cp</tt> will not follow symbolic links. Unexperienced users should always use URL files to define new entries in the Disk Navigator menu. </list>  <sect>Options  The option dialog box is activated selecting "Disk Navigator" -> "Options" from the KPanel menu. It is possible to set the following options: <list> <item><bf>"Edit Personal..."</bf>, <bf>"Edit Shared..."</bf> these buttons allow to change entries in the Personal and Shared Sections (note: only superusers can change the shared section). In both cases, a KFM window is displayed. Use KFM to create URL files, links and folders in the personal (<tt>~/.kde/share/disknav</tt>) and shared (<tt>$KDEDIR/share/disknav</tt>) directories. For more details, read section "Adding, Changing and Removing Filesystem Entries". When either the "Apply" or the "OK" button in the Options dialog is selected, these directories are parsed again and the "Disk Navigator" menu is updated. Alternatively, it is possible to change personal and shared directory contents from the command line (e.g. using a shell script). In such case, the panel must be restarted ("Panel" -> "Restart" from the KPanel menu) to re-parse these directories. <item><bf>"Max recent folder entries":</bf> how many folders are stored in the "Recent" section. <item><bf>"Max recent file entries":</bf> how many files (applications or documents) are stored in the "Recent" section. <item><bf>"Max files in a single folder":</bf> if the number of files in a folder exceeds this limit, the folder content is not displayed (and a "Too Many Files" icon is displayed). It is suggested that this limit is kept not too high for slow systems. Future version of Disk Navigator will probably get rid of this problem (see the "Limitations" section). <item><bf>"Show dot files"</bf> sets if hidden files should be displayed in "Disk Navigator" menus. <item><bf>"Ignore case when sorting":</bf> if set, uses the order "A", "a", "B", "b" when sorting rather than "A", "B", "a", "b". <item><bf>"Show Shared section":</bf> if set, the Shared section is shown. <item><bf>"Show Personal section":</bf> if set, the Personal section is shown. <item><bf>"Show Recent section":</bf> if set, the Recent section is shown. Note that when this option is turned off, the list of recently accessed folder/files is not updated (some users might turn this option off for `privacy' reasons). <item><bf>"Show Option entry":</bf> if set, the Option entry is shown. Note that the Option dialog box can be accessed from the KPanel configuration dialog. The "Option" entry here is just a shortcut for those who change frequently Disk Navigator options. <item><bf>"Terminal application":</bf> Application that must be run when "Open Folder" is selected holding the Shift key. </list>  <sect>Adding, Changing and Removing Filesystem Entries  The Disk Navigator menu can be easily customized to contain frequently accessed filesystem entries. After installation, the Disk Navigator menu contains some example entries (root, user's home, user's desktop, etc.). It is possible to remove those entries, change their icons, add new entries, and so on. To edit Disk Navigator menu entries, select "Options..." from the Disk Navigator menu. Alternatively, select Panel -> Configure from the KPanel menu and then select the "Disk Navigator" tab. At this point click on "Edit Personal..." or "Edit Shared..." buttons to edit, respectively, user specific entries and common entries (shared among all users). Note that you must be logged as root to change shared entries. After that, a KFM window is displayed, showing the entries for the Disk Navigator section that you are editing (Shared/Personal). If, for instance, you want to add a new entry pointing to /opt/kde you can do the following: <list> <item> Select: File -> New -> URL. A new icon named "URL" should appear in the KFM window. <item> Click with the right mouse button on the new icon and choose "Properties". <item> Change the file name to "KDE.kdelnk". "KDE" will be the name of the entry in the Disk Navigator menu (the <tt>.kdelnk</tt> suffix is ignored). <item> Select the "URL" tab and write <tt>/opt/kde</tt> in the URL input box. <item> Optionally, you can change the icon. This is the icon that will be displayed in the Disk Navigator menu. <item> Close the KFM window and "OK" on the Disk Navigator configuration window. This should restart KPanel. After that, you will see the new entry in the Disk Navigator menu. </list> In place of an URL file you might use symbolic links. However, using symbolic links has some drawbacks and are not recommended. Please read Section "Feature & Tips". To remove an entry from the Disk Navigator menu simply remove the corresponding URL from the KFM window used to edit entries. Note that you can also create folders in this window to group common entries. For instance, you could create a folder "Network" containing entry points to distributed filesystem mount points (NFS, SAMBA, etc).  <sect>Notes  <list> <item> Disk Navigator menus are updated automatically when directory contents change, except the first menu, that is updated through the Options dialog. <item> The contents of the "Recent" section are saved in the ~/.kde/share/config/kpanelrc configuration file. If you want to clear this section, you can clear the <tt>RecentFolders</tt> and <tt>RecentFiles</tt> entries in this file after logging out from KDE. <item> Documents and applications not accessed through the KPanel are not added to the "Recent" section. This limitation will disappear in future versions of Disk Navigator. <item> Due to efficiency reasons, most files are not displayed with the same icon you would see in a file manager window. With the current version, only <tt>.kdelnk</tt> files have the corresponding icon displayed. Other files are displayed with two different icons to distinguish between data files and executables. <item> Copying <tt>~/.kde</tt> and $KDEDIR: if you are using symbolic links to define filesystem entry points in the Shared/Personal sections, you must be careful when copying the KDE directory, since the <tt>cp</tt> command with the <tt>-r</tt> option follows symbolic links. Under Linux you can use the <tt>-d</tt> option to avoid this problem. However, you are recommended to change all symbolic links to corresponding KDE URL files. Symbolic links are stored under <tt>$KDEDIR/share/disknav</tt> (Shared) and <tt>~/.kde/share/disknav</tt> (Personal). </list>  <sect>Configuration File (advanced topic)  Configuration information for Disk Navigator are stored in the <tt>~/.kde/share/config/kpanelrc</tt> configuration file. The group is <tt>[kdisknav]</tt>. Usually you don't need to edit this file manually, as this can be done through the Options dialog box. This section documents entries related to Disk Navigator. If the option is missing in the configuration file, its default value is assumed. Note that a broken [kdisknav] group can be repaired simply removing all the entries listed here (their default value will be assumed). <list> <item> <bf>MaxNavigableFolderEntries</bf>=n : if a folder contains more than n entries, a "Too many files" message is displayed. Default: 200 <item> <bf>MaxRecentFoldersEntries</bf>=n : the "Recent" menu section will contain the last n folders open through Disk Navigator. Default: 4 <item> <bf>MaxRecentFilesEntries</bf>=n : the "Recent" menu section will contain the last n files open through Disk Navigator. Default: 4 <item> <bf>ShowDotFiles</bf>=on/off : should dot (hidden) files be showed in the Disk Navigator? Default: off <item> <bf>RecentFiles</bf>=path1,path2,path3... : list of recently opened files. <item> <bf>RecentFolders</bf>=path1,path2,path3...: list of recently opened folders. <item> <bf>IgnoreCase</bf>=on/off : should Disk Navigator sort files in case-sensitive mode? Default: off <item> <bf>Terminal</bf>=app : use this application to launch a terminal when the user holds the Shift key clicking on "Open Folder". Command-line options can be added here. Default: kvt <item> <bf>ShowGlobalSection</bf>=on/off : should the Shared section be part of the Disk Navigator main menu? Default: on <item> <bf>ShowLocalSection</bf>=on/off : should the Personal section be part of the Disk Navigator main menu? Default: on <item> <bf>ShowRecentSection</bf>=on/off : should the Recent section be part of the Disk Navigator main menu? Default: on <item> <bf>ShowOptionEntry</bf>=on/off : should the Option entry be in the Disk Navigator main menu? Default: on </list>  <sect>Feedback  Bugs can be reported filling the form available <htmlurl url="http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/2776/disk-navigator-bugs.html" name="here">. Comments and suggestions can be sent directly to the author (<htmlurl url="mailto:iglio@kde.org" name="Pietro Iglio">). </article>