RE: dired-details: show/hide file details in Dired

[Drew Adams]

> Thank you for sending the code.  I got the other code, too,
>     fit-frame.el
>     autofit-frame.el
>     dired-details.el
>
> which looks to be needed to test the library.

No, not really. As I said, the frame-fitting part is optional. The `require'
is soft (no error if not found), and if you do not have the *-frame.el
libraries, the Dired hide/show code still works just fine. I use non-nil
pop-up-frames, so frame fitting is important to me, but it is not necessary
for the other features provided by dired-details+.el. You can no doubt
imagine that without frame fitting not much would be gained by removing
Dired details: the frame would occupy just as much screen real estate as for
the detailed listing.

dired-details.el is required because dired-details+.el is just a tweak for
it.

> You forgot to create the variable dired-details-state; I put
>     (setq dired-details-state nil)
> at the beginning of dired-details+.el and have not had any trouble
> since.

No, I didn't forget to create that variable. dired-details+.el is just a
tweak on top of dired-details, which defines `dired-details-state' with
`defvar'. If I had written dired-details, then I would have just modified it
directly, instead of creating a separate tweak library.

> It seems to work on a short test; however, I do like the long listing
> that dired provides, I especially find it important to see permission,
> owners, size, and date, as well name.  And I hardly ever use frames.
>
> So for me, all this would be useless.  But others operate differently.

I understand. Use of this feature would be optional. As with all options,
not every Emacs user will find it useful. As always, it depends on your own
usage patterns. It can even depend on your operating system. I am often on
M$ Windows these days, so I often don't need to bother with the file
permissions, for instance.

I don't claim that everyone will find this useful. I do, and I'm glad that
Rob wrote it. I keep my Dired buffers with the file-name-only display 90% of
the time. YMMV. And, besides being optional, you have a toggle to change the
display. I too "like the long listing that dired provides". I just like to
be able to also have a short listing.

Thanks for giving it a try and reporting what you found.