BeCommander Help

Welcome to the BeCommander Help file. Hopefully this file will help you to use BeCommander and help you with features that may not be obvious or apparent.

BeCommander is a file management tool written to resemble much of the functionality of other commander style applications such as Windows Commander, or Midnight Commander. Much of the functionality is similar, however BeCommander allows a few additional things such as Multi-Pane browsing, and multi-threading. BeCommander can view up to 10 directories simultaneously, and all copy, or move operations that can be very time consuming are spawned off into a separate thread allowing the user to continue using BeCommander to do other work.

 

Hotkeys

Ctrl A

Archive - tar the selected files.

Ctrl D

Sets BeCommander to 2 panes both pointing to /boot/home.

Ctrl E

Renames selected file in current pane.

Ctrl F

Opens FTP Dialog

Ctrl + Shift F

Closes out a FTP Session

Ctrl G

Go To Directory, Allows you to type in a path to a desired directory.

Ctrl I

Information - This is not yet implemented, but will mimic the trackers function.

Ctrl N

New Folder - Creates a new folder inside the current folder in the current pane

Ctrl O

Open - Opens the currently selected file or directory.

Ctrl P

Adds a Pane to BeCommander

Ctrl + Shift P

Removed the current Pane from BeCommander

Ctrl R

Open the BeCommander Preferences Dialog.

Ctrl T

Launches Tracker in the current directory - This is especially helpful while all tracker functionality (such as archive) has yet to be replaced by BeCommander.

Ctrl + Shift T

Launches the Terminal in the same directory as the focus pane.

Ctrl U

Opens Search (File System Query) Window

Del

The Delete Button on the keyboard is used to delete selected files or directories

Tab

Tab moves the focus to the next pane to the right.

Shift + Tab

Moves the focus to the next pane to the left.

Backspace

Moves Up one Directory, Also gets out of Query Results

F1

Opens the BeCommander Help File (This File)

F2

Refreshes the Current Directory View

F3

Opens File in Lister (Internal Viewer)

F4

Opens File in StyledEdit

F5

Copies to the next pane.

F6

Moves to the next pane.

Shift + F6

Renames selected file in current pane.

F7

Create New Folder

Alt + F7

Opens Search (File System Query) Window

F8

Delete

Space (or Ctrl + Space)

Selects the current item and calculates the space occupied by the selected folder.

Insert

Selects the current item and moves the focus to the next entry..

Ctrl + #'s

Sets focus to a specific pane. For example Ctrl + 1 will move to the first (left most) pane.

Ctrl + Arrows

Arrows are used for browsing the file system. For example an Ctrl + -> can be used to open a folder in the next pane in the direction of the arrow (Ctrl + -> Opens in the next Pane to the right, where as Ctrl + <- will open it to the left). The up arrow works the same as the backspace button.

A-Z, 1-9

Typing alphanumeric keys without a modifier will search for and select the next file in the focus pane that starts with that letter or number.

Ctrl Q

Quits BeCommander

 

Query Interface

BeCommander contains a powerful, easy to use Interface for searching your file system for files based on Name, Date Modified, and Size. Also included is the ability to search for text within files.

When a Query is submitted the result set is sent to the focus pane of BeCommander. Once there all entries can be acted upon in a similar fashion as a standard directory listing. Files can be viewed, moved, copied, deleted or anything else that BeCommander can normally do to files. Exceptions to this are issues such as copying, or moving into a pane with query results, which doesn't make sense in this context.

In order to return to a standard file pane after you are done with the query results, simply hit the backspace key to go back to the directory that was being viewed prior to being replaced by the Query results.

Currently BeCommander can only execute these Queries on BFS partitions. We plan allow queries across, FAT, FAT32, ext2, and other file systems.

 

FTP Issues

BeCommander contains an integrated FTP client that allows you to treat an FTP server in a similar fashion to a local file system. The directory structure of an FTP server can be browsed using all the same commands as a local one. Files and directories can be copied, or moved using the same commands as local copying or moving. All file transfer operations are spawned off into a separate thread allowing you to continue browsing the FTP server.

 

Additional Comments

At the bottom of each pane, summary information is displayed. This information shows the total size and number of files currently selected.

All copy or moving operations are spawned into separate threads. This is true for local file operations or FTP operations. Also the Query window is a separate thread so that in the case that you are executing a query that takes a long time to return the user can continue using BeCommander for other work.

 

 

Major Features Coming Soon

Sorting a pane by clicking on the column headers.

Tree View

Breif view - for displaying columns of files in one view

Archive Browsing