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View Full Version : Sub-folders are a beautiful thing


Jason Dunn
04-04-2002, 08:46 PM
I have a dream. A dream where files and folders can live in peaceful harmony, files nestled comfortably inside the folders. Any file, any folder, it matters not. I have a dream where type A personalities can organize their files in any way they want, without the heat of oppression bearing down upon them. Do you have the same dream?<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/messyfolder.gif" /><br /><br />I carry 50+ themes with me on my CompactFlash card, yet due to some programming quirk or bad design decision by Microsoft, you can't place themes into a sub-folder of My Documents (whether in main memory or a memory card). They need to stay in the root of the folder, forcing the chaos you see in the screen shot above. Is this a small matter? To some. But I tell you my freedom-loving brothers and sisters, some of us like to be organized!<br /><br />What's the point of having a real file system if you can't organize your files? There's so much inconsistency when it comes to the location of files. Some apps, like Windows Media Player and Microsoft Reader, will sniff out your content anywhere on the device. Great! Yet other apps, like the theme loader, are too limited to even look one folder deep inside My Documents. And what's with the one sub folder limitation inside My Documents? If you want to have a folder called music, with a sub-folder for 60's music, and then organize your music based on folders for each artist, guess what? You can't.<br /><br />Sure, some of these are extreme user scenarios, but if you're going to call a device a "Pocket PC", it has to live up to the pedigree of a PC - flexibility and power.

rfischer
04-04-2002, 08:58 PM
You are not alone, Jason. That lacking feature drives me crazy too! I cannot stand to have everything under one 'My Documents' folder! :cry:

sweetpete
04-04-2002, 09:03 PM
And what's with the one sub folder limitation inside My Documents? If you want to have a folder called music, with a sub-folder for 60's music, and then organize your music based on folders for each artist, guess what? You can't.



Are you sure?? I have just created a 5 deep heirarchy in My Documents with no problems on my 3870 :?:

I do totally agree with you on the themes limitation :x . It drives me nuts! I saw a feature of Theme Master that is supposed to support user-defined folders to use for Themes. I'm almost considering purchasing it, just for that

Chris Spera
04-04-2002, 09:23 PM
You **CAN** create sub folders. You can even double tap them to edit and save them. However, Pocket PC 2000/2002 applications cannot see any lower than 1 subfolder deep.

Try it. Create an Excel file, put it deeper than 1 subfolder in your devices synchronized, My Documents folder on your PC, sync, and then look for it in Pocket Excel. YOu won't see it.

However, if you use File Explorer (or some other 3rd party file browser), find it, double tap, you'll be able to edit and save the document.

This doesn't solve Jason's Theme problem, though...

I agree that this is an issue that could be easily solved and implemented in a ROM update; but as MS doesn't make any $$ from the development of Pocket Office apps, its doubtful that this will make it to the end users who would like this issue resolved.

Kindest Regards,

Christopher Spera
pocketnow Contributing Editor & Columnist

pocketnow.com -- it's all about portability...
http://www.pocketnow.com

dunneldeen
04-04-2002, 09:27 PM
You know what bothers me? When you install a program in main memory it puts it in the Program Files folder, but when you install a program to Storage Card it puts them into root. How hard would it be for them to have the programs installed to \Storage Card\Program Files\? Based on the criteria you set down in this thought, I must be one of those A personalities, because the PocketPC File System limits drive me nuts some times.

Lotak
04-04-2002, 09:53 PM
Preach it, brother!
I spend far too much time meticulously arranging my files on my Pocket PC only to have to leave it such a mess because it refuses to see things in my folders.

tonyv
04-04-2002, 09:54 PM
Yeah, I have the same problem with media player -- all my alubum directories have to live directly under My Documents. It sucks, as does the lack of a decent file manager, a task manager, the ability to really close processes, the lack of the Alt key functionality in menus....

I don't know why Microsoft is so resistant to fixing these numerous problems. The PocketPC platform would be so much more straightforward to use if they just made it work the sameway as their desktop operating systems instead of intentionally crippling it for "dummies".

Jason Dunn
04-04-2002, 10:01 PM
Are you sure?? I have just created a 5 deep heirarchy in My Documents with no problems on my 3870 :?:


You're right - I worded that poorly. As someone else pointed out, you CAN create them, but nothing will see it - not even the apps that scour the whole device. So it's not really a solution...

spg
04-04-2002, 10:22 PM
I totally agree with you Jason, it drives me crazy having all my files in the one folder. I carry around about 50 themes as well, and they always get in the way when I put other things in the My Documents folder. I hope they will pay attention and fix this very soon, although I have my doubts. Anyway, that was my "I agree" post.

Paragon
04-04-2002, 10:33 PM
This is, I think one of the widest talked about short comings of the Pocket PC. Right from day one people have complained about this.

Has anyone at Microsoft ever said this is why we did it this way (Ok everyone can stop laughing now. I know how silly that sounds... Microsoft sharing their omnipotent wisdom with the Plebes.) Is it supposed to make the system look faster then it is by not having to look so deep? Are there any real problems created by changing this.

Dave

Joff
04-04-2002, 10:51 PM
Yes, it is difficult to find any good reason why it was implemented this way. May be they thought that by limiting the anount of control on file locations, it would make it easier (all in one place). But why not have sub-folders in the My Docoments folders then? PocketPC200/2002 will be remembered for what seems to be a flaw (it will be in the history books, that could be the purpose).

robind
04-04-2002, 11:03 PM
Yeah, this is my second biggest gripe about the PPC that I had hoped would have been fixed in PPC2002. The first gripe is the Program Files thing mentioned above.

Actually my first gripe was solved by installing SuperAlert and that was the non-repeating alarms. So the file-system issues have moved to the top of the list.

It's too bad that replacing the common dialogs is not as simple on a PPC as it is on a desktop win32 system. If it were some third party would probably be selling a replacement hack by now and every app that used the common system dialogs would be instantly upgraded...

Chris Spera
04-04-2002, 11:09 PM
Yeah, I have the same problem with media player -- all my alubum directories have to live directly under My Documents.


Not **entirely** true... I've got my music (almost 41 CD's worth) in Genre Folders under \Storage Card\My Documents\Audio.

In other words, I've got Diamon Rio's Greatest Hits under:
\Storage Card\My Documents\Audio\Country\Greatest Hits.

Sometimes it gets difficult to see the complete song title due to the long path to the file, but I've been doing this since Dec. 2001 when I upgraded a 3635 to Pocket PC 2002. My iPAQ 3765 also doesn't have any problems with this.

Sven Johannsen
04-04-2002, 11:11 PM
My themes are in the \Windows folder. That not work for you?

I don't mind the file depth limitation half so much as the can't sync the CF card limitation.

Ed Hansberry
04-04-2002, 11:15 PM
I have a dream.
Oh man, when I see these words I know jason is getting up on a soapbox. ;-) I would never rant like that in public. :lol:

Endroren
04-04-2002, 11:19 PM
Disclaimer: I'm bias toward ListPro HOWEVER this is still a good idea! :D

I have the same problem with my iPAQ however what I do is use ListPro 3.0 (in fact I do the same thing on the desktop). This solution has made me very happy which is why I'm sharing it! It isn't perfect but try it at least!

ListPro lets you create a linked field. You can browse the My Documents folder and easily choose the file you want to link to. You can then add notes, a rating, etc etc.. What's more if you type in the location ( My Device\Programs\etc...) you can even link to programs and files NOT in the My Documents directory.

Then all you have to do is click on the thing and it opens...that easy. Take MP3s...I have a list like:

Name Link Band Rating Notes

with every MP3 on my device and micro-drive. I then just click the link and the song opens...that easy. I can sort by band, song name, etc. I use it for ALL sorts of files and even programs...my friends and I joke that it is my ListPro OS.

ChrisW
04-04-2002, 11:22 PM
The problem is even worse than not being to nest arbitrarily. I would be annoyed if I only had to flatten my directory structure to one level below \My Documents. However, doing so leads to a large number of directories at that level. The file locator will only show the first (some number) of them, though. Now I can't get to those folders that appear later in the alphabet.

One of the programs afflicted by this is Pocket Streets. I can't use it to open any of my maps. The way I do this now is through my explorer app (I use Resco Explorer if you're keeping score). Navigate to the directory in Explorer and double-click, and PocketStreets is able to open the otherwise-hidden file through the association.

[Cruzer]
04-04-2002, 11:28 PM
Jason,

why not use Stellarmetrics Theme Manager. It captures your theme as a .gif files and it stores it in a seperate folder in your my douments folder. Now after it captures a theme you can delete it from you my documents folder. I have about 30+ themes and it takes less space then the .tsk files. I still think they have a free version( well the one i'm using is). And it can change your theme automatically every day, hour, 20min, 5min or random. Well hope that helps.

www.stellarmetrics.com

RC

Gerard
04-05-2002, 01:09 AM
I still get annoyed by the folder-depth limitation at times, but since I never sync files (only use CF>PC adapter which is so much faster) this is not a serious issue. I organize as many unorthodox (non-My Documents) and sub-sub-sub.... folders as I please. If I would like an program which doesn't capitalize on Tillanosoft's tGetFile.dll to see a particular file, I leave it at a level allowed by MS stupidity. But by keeping thousands of other files at deeper levels I also ensure minimum list-view opening times for Word, Excel, etc.. I use ftpView if I wish to quickly browse any folders without all the down-up-level delays of File Explorer.
As for program install locations: HAH! Of my 70+ installed apps, perhaps 10 live where their installers put them. The rest are far more 'type A' in their organization. Registry mods are not that hard. File associations can be fixed.

Jason Dunn
04-05-2002, 01:23 AM
]
why not use Stellarmetrics Theme Manager


Actually, the app I just posted on (Theme Master) does a wonderful job of this!

JamesM
04-05-2002, 04:15 PM
Ironically, Jason, your opening words come on the anniversary of Dr. King's assasination. (No value judgement implied - I just thought it was worth mentioning)

James

Jason Dunn
04-05-2002, 05:57 PM
Ironically, Jason, your opening words come on the anniversary of Dr. King's assasination. (No value judgement implied - I just thought it was worth mentioning)


Wow - that's eerie. I actually have a small site devoted to Dr. King:

http://www.kensai.com/personal/mlk/

I was going to link to that site, but I thought it might be considered in poor taste by some. The date totally slipped my mind...eerie. 8O

Jeff Kirvin
04-05-2002, 07:35 PM
Has anyone at Microsoft ever said this is why we did it this way (Ok everyone can stop laughing now. I know how silly that sounds... Microsoft sharing their omnipotent wisdom with the Plebes.) Is it supposed to make the system look faster then it is by not having to look so deep? Are there any real problems created by changing this.


I heard from someone at Microsoft that this was done for speed concerns. I could understand that on a 133MHz SH3 Jornada, but I really wish they'd opened it up for Pocket PC 2002 devices. A 206MHz StrongARM, not to mention a 400MHz XScale, should be able to hand recursive directory searches quickly enough.

seanturner
04-07-2002, 09:05 AM
I might just bed a rambling idiot, but, can't you also put themes in the /Windows folder? I am sure I was at least able to do that with my PPC 2000 iPaq.

Jason Dunn
04-07-2002, 03:18 PM
I might just bed a rambling idiot, but, can't you also put themes in the /Windows folder? I am sure I was at least able to do that with my PPC 2000 iPaq.


You can, but 50 themes at 113KB each is a lot of main memory being used up. :-)

Ed Hansberry
04-07-2002, 11:07 PM
[quote=seanturner]
You can, but 50 themes at 113KB each is a lot of main memory being used up. :-)

Yes, but we all know they don't need to be 113KB. :P