Column view: Soft open folders on single click

[thomasaull]

Problem

I regularly stumble upon the following behavior:

1. Click a folder
2. Press F2 to rename that folder

This does not work because the folder is already opened and the selection has moved to its contents, thus the selection of the initial clicked folder is lost. This issue of course is the same for copy/paste or any other command executed with a keyboard shortcut. I really like the behavior of single click to open folders and double click to open files, so please hear me out 😅

Proposal

My proposal to solve this issue would be: Open the folder — meaning show its contents in the next column, but keep the selection active on the clicked folder. This way every operation executed by using the keyboard would work and the folder is "openend" at the same time.

This would conflict with keyboard navigation and could maybe be solved this way:

• Current: Click folder, use arrow up/down to navigate folder contents
• Proposal:: Click folder, press arrow right to move focus to folder contents, use arrow up/down to navigate folder contents. This, I guess, would actually be consistent with how the navigation currently works if the keyboard is used exclusively

There might be more conflicts, although currently I can't think of anything else.

Prior Art (Optional)

No response

[jeremypw]

Not sure how this would work for renaming as renaming the root folder of a view would invalid the view and moreover there is no obvious place for the editable entry to appear. I suppose it may be possible for pressing rename (F2) on a view with nothing selected could cause it to automatically navigate to the parent and then start renaming the relevant folder but it would be a little awkward.

Note there are several ways to select a folder for renaming. The simplest is just to hold down the <Ctrl> key while you click.

[thomasaull]

Regarding the technical details, I'm afraid I couldn't be of much help. However wouldn't it be possible to destroy the current view and immediately create a new view for the renamed folder. I guess the OS would notify the app about the rename operation somehow?

Honestly I didn't know the Ctrl-Click workaround is possbile and I would consider myself a technically skilled person. I doubt the average user will get this. Additionally it's a bit awkward also:

• If another folder is selected, I end up with two selected folders and the rename would not work
• If I try to Ctrl+Click the already selected folder the selection is discarded
• It basically only works if don't have a folder selected initially or when I Ctrl-Click the same folder two times (first one deselects it, second one selects it and keeps the selection)