GCommander, a GNOME file manager
GCommander
is a two-panel Total/Norton/Volkov/Midnight Commander-like
file manager made primarily for the GNOME desktop environment.
This
homepage is temporary and in written in README-style. A more polished
version will be made when the project is more mature (it was started
July 2005).
The
project's main goal is to create a two-panel graphical file manager
familiar to NC, and its clones' users. This includes full keyboard
operation. The other goal is to make GCommander as native to GNOME as
possible, this includes using only the most essential GNOME libraries
and writing the project in C because GNOME is written in C.
So,
the project's three main ideas are GNOME, C and Commander. There are
other file managers written in C, for GNOME or resembling Norton, but
not all these options at once. Yes, Gnome Commander fulfills there
conditions but it's from the Gnome 1 era and Gnome 2 support still
isn't implemented. It also requires lots of additional libraries my
Ubuntu distribution doesn't have installed by default and I hate
that. I also don't like how it handles things such as file selection,
although it's a matter of personal taste.
The
feature list:
- ability
to select files with right-click and do simple operations such as
Copy, Move, Rename etc.
- transparent
networking thanks to the GnomeVFS library
- a
simple text viewer with hex, plaintext and HTML-tags hiding modes
(possibly a third-party will be used)
- possibly
a search feature
The
list is still incomplete and will change in time.
The
project requires GTK2 (widgets and Glib framework), GnomeVFS (file
operations) and libgnomeui (to show appropriate icons).
Here's
a screenshot of how GCommander alpha-version looks like:
As
you can see, the app is still far from being complete. When I write
more code, I will update this page and the screenshot. Before then,
the project's top priority will be development and not publicity.
GCommander
is released under the GNU GPL license but I'm still the copyright
holder. This means that you can do anything with the source/binaries
as long as you don't violate GPL.
There's
no CVS access yet because I don't know yet what features exactly
needed and because my internet connection is too expensive to control
CVS. You can however download the sources from the
project's
homepage and send diff patches (contact details below). The
sources are however not frequently updated. But until the project is
announced terminated, I am working
on it, just without a lot of releases or just too slowly. If you want
to help the project, you can do one of the following tasks:
- Design a logo. The current logo is bad because
it was made in 15 minutes, it doesn't mean anything and it's not
recognizable. The color set can be inherited though.
- Find spelling and grammar mistakes. English is
not my native language (I'm Russian) so mistakes are natural to
happen. I've made software before which was entirely Russian and the
problem was that nobody except Russian people used it. This way,
even good projects ended up forgotten. The source code is also
English, as well as comments. You are free to send corrected
versions to my email (details below).
- Make translations. Not at this stage because a
lot may change and there isn't a lot of text yet, but this will be
another task in the future.
- Debug and test. Please note however that
GCommander is seriously tested against memory leaks with valgrind.
If it gobbles up memory, it's not GCommander but the libraries it
uses. If you manage to find a memory leak and you're sure it's my
fault and not a bug in the library, send me an email (details
below).
Please note that if you want to make a donation,
I don't have a PayPal account. They only allow this service in
selected countries, and Russia unfortunately isn't one of them.
You
can send
me an email message through SourceForge's website (if you have a Sourceforge ID). I won't publish my
email here because spambots will collect it and then I'll end up
cleaning my mailbox. No, wait – my username in Gmail is 'zlogic'
(without the quotes), that should give you a hint what my email
really is. You can also visit my personal website at
http://zlogic.da.ru, please note
however that it's entirely in Russian.