

Ranger - Finder clone for the terminal - purge
http://nongnu.org/ranger/

======
jfb
I know that this marks me as a graybeard, but this has nothing to do with the
Finder; it's (after 10 minutes investigating) a decent mc style file browser.
The Finder _was_ the spatial interface to the Mac file system. It's been dead
for years; the zombie Finder that Apple currently ships is a hideous, mutant
hybrid, neither Workspace fish nor Finder fowl.

~~~
afandian
I've been using Finder since 7.5.3. The Finder hasn't changed all that much in
that time has it? Comparative to the rest of the OS? What's so different?

~~~
Someone
As far as a user was concerned, before Mac OS X, the Finder's icons and the
files they represented were one object, as were the Finder's windows and the
directories they represented. However hard you tried (which you didn't,
because you knew a file was the same as its icon), each file had only one icon
and each directory only one window. Also, each directory/window had its own
position on the screen, size, and layout.

Now, that 1:1 identity is broken. You can have multiple windows showing the
content of the same directory. Also, you can have multiple icons on screen
'pointing' to the same file.

This may look like a minor change, but the feel of the UI is very different.
It feels much less a direct manipulation interface.

Yes, Mac OS already was slightly inconsistent. Open and save dialogs could
show directories and Windows that wer visible in the Finder. However, these
felt as part of the application, and were very focused on the task at hand.
Icons in those dialogs felt as representations of files, not as the files
themselves. Also, there were aliases, but being files, they maintained the 1:1
correspondence between icons and files. Altogether, those things never killed
that illusion of 'an icon _is_ a file, a window _is_ a directory'.

Because Mac OS X is a multi-user system, I think Mac OS X had to break this
rule (network shares were already stretching the metaphor (almost) beyond
breaking years before Mac OS X), but even today, it still feels like a loss to
me.

~~~
afandian
Interesting. I've never felt particularly strongly one way or another about
the Finder and I didn't feel the changes as strongly as you and others seemed
to.

My personal GUI progression was Mac OS 7.5, RiscOS 3, Windows 9x, Mac OS 8 &
9, BeOS, KDE, Mac OS 10.3, onwards. I didn't see a significant break, but
maybe it's because of the detour. It just didn't occur to me that it was
anything other than a smooth transition. By the looks of things, a good number
of people seem to have noticed the change, and many don't like it. I'm not
sure the 'classic' way of doing things was entirely compatible with a command
line interface (I get that that's what Lisa and Mac was trying to supersede).
But I don't think many doubt the utility of CLIs for 'serious' modern use. Do
they?

One thing I do remember is that we've always had symlinks (aliases). I don't
remember if they were in System 6 but they were certainly there in System 7.

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klibertp
This is taken from the list in another submission: "Unix tricks" or similar. I
tried it today, but found not vim-like enough (no help under :h ?). I then
started searching and found vifm: <http://vifm.sourceforge.net/> \- and after
a few minutes I was comfortable with it. I didn't use mc even once today; it's
just day one so I don't know if this will stick with me, but it shows much
promise.

~~~
crazydiamond
vifm is good. If you like vim movements, you can try zfm (its written in shell
- <https://github.com/rkumar/zfm>), and if you like the default hint mode, try
'cetus' -- on the same git repo).

After using vim movements in a file manager, my finding was that pressing 10j
or 5gg etc to go to a file is a slow cumbersome way to move around, when you
usually just want to open a file/page it or run an action on it. That's why
using hints (as in vimperator) or shortcuts for each file is a much faster way
of navigating. Just jump with one keystroke.

Similarly it's cool to have vim bindings like "dG" or "d3gg" etc in your file
manager (vimfm and zfm have it) but these are not really features that make a
difference. It's the speed of getting 90% of your workflow done, and
shortcuts/hints are what get that done fastest.

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dktbs
I like ranger, and have used it for a few years, but I don't understand why it
would be considered a clone of Finder. They are both file managers, that is
about all they have in common.

~~~
sgtpep
It cosidered as clone of Fider because of Miller columns it implements. Only
few file managers have them <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns>.

------
crazydiamond
I found ranger slow. I use cetus (its fast and you can select files with a
hotkey (<https://github.com/rkumar/cetus>). There's also a shell version which
has a lot more functionality and even a vim mode (since some people here are
asking for vim like behavior: <https://github.com/rkumar/zfm>)

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jrajav
An answer and a question:

Re: "The secondary task of ranger is to psychically guess which program you
want to use for opening particular files.", you can also do `open somefile' to
have that file opened in its default app.

And does anyone know if there is anything for OS X that clones your current
directory between a terminal and a Finder window? That would be amazingly
useful.

~~~
jfb

      % open .
    

?

EDIT: And you can drag the little thumb icon in a Finder window's title over
to a Terminal and it'll insert the path corresponding to that window at point.

~~~
Roboprog
Thanks! I've had my Mac less than a year, and stuff like this really helps. (I
tried both of those tricks, and they indeed work as advertised)

~~~
jfb
Also super useful:

    
    
      % man 1 pbpaste

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kabell
I looked into this a year or so ago when I was looking to "vimify" my whole
setup. I couldn't get into Ranger because of the lack of real image previews
(I was doing a lot of image processing stuff at the time). W3M looks like it
will help a lot with that though, so I'll definitely give it a second shot.

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buster
Ah no thanks, i'm sticking with Midnight Commander or plain and simple shell
commands.

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adhipg
On MacOS X, you can simply do:

brew install ranger

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DrinkWater
I could never understand the use of such tools in the terminal. I guess you
need to have a certain and very specific kind of workflow.

