Dired coloring and other conveniences

[Drew Adams]

    > 1) We should *not* highlight the links (except via mouseover).
    > The links are known or predictable by virtue of the regularity
    > of their positions. Highlighting the links in such a buffer
    > hinders, it does not help, orientation and navigation.

    I generally agree with Drew on this -- in very "link dense" buffers,
    excessive highlighting can be more annoying than helpful.

    In the case of dired, however, there is a slight problem (especially
    with recent verions of GNU ls[*]) with visually separating the filename
    from the file-info on the same line.  Perhaps it would be a good idea to
    give the _other_ fields (date, etc) a slightly different face to
    de-emphasize them a bit?
    Here are some pics...

Not bad.

I tend to be interested in some of the things in other columns, at least
some of the time. When I'm not interested, I remove the other columns
altogether - see below. As you can see from the screenshot I sent earlier, I
give each column its own face, except for uninteresting files like .elc, for
which I use the same, dull face for the whole line.

Because (on Unix or GNU/Linux) I want to quickly see if a file has different
permissions from the others in a directory, I use different colors for each
permission. Similarly, I use a different face for the file suffix, and I
color a trailing `*' red to show that a file is executable. (I use -alF for
dired-listing-switches, to get the `*').

One of the tweaks I really like for Dired is `dired-details', a library by
Rob Giardina. I have my own minor enhancement, `dired-details+.el'. By
hitting a key, I can toggle between showing only the file names or
everything. Especially on Windows, much of the time I am not interested in
more than the file names. Since I use one buffer per frame, and I
automatically resize frames, not showing the other columns saves a lot of
real estate and visual noise. The effect is modal: subsequent Dired buffers
use the last setting (open to all columns or closed to just file names). A
minor tweak, but surprisingly convenient. I often go days without showing
more than the file names. Or, I sometimes take a peek by hitting my toggle
key, and then hit it again to get back to a "leaner" Dired. Or, I show all
columns in one Dired buffer, but limit the others to file names.

If you're interested, both dired-details.el and dired-details+.el are
available here:
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki?action=index;match=%5C.el%28%5C.gz%29%
3F.