Re: mass copying

Kevin Krammer posted on Thu, 15 Aug 2013 19:19:11 +0200 as excerpted:

> On Thursday, 2013-08-15, Doug wrote:
>> In Windows 95 (and I think in Win 98) you could open a window on a
>> directory, open a window on another directory, and using the mouse,
>> highlight a series of files in the first directory. Then you could
>> *copy* that whole group of files to the second directory, en masse.
>> Or, I think you could decide to *move* them, en masse.
>> 
>> I don't think you can do that in Windows 7 or 8, but I'm not sure.
>> Anyway:
>> 
>> I have not discovered any way to do that in KDE or using any Linux app.
>> Can it be done, and if so, how?  It's a royal PITA to copy or move
>> files one-by-one to another directory.
> 
> This is strange, that has been available for more than a decade in
> basically all UI file managers.
> 
> Lets assume using Dolphin.
> 
> Select files to copy move in one window, then
> 1) drag to second window
> 2) edit->copy  (cut for move) in first window, edit ->paste in second
> 3) right click -> copy (cut), right click -> paste
> 4) CTRL+C (+X), CTRL+V
> or any combination of the last three.
> 
> Works on local file systems and remotely (FTP, SFTP, WebDav, etc).

Agreed and I use all four methods here depending on what feels most 
convenient to me ATM, but...

Doug /did/ mention having to do it one-by-one, which to me anyway hints 
at a a problem /multi-selecting/ the files, not necessarily copying/
moving once selected...

But you did such a good job explaining the copy/move possibilities that I 
rather doubt I can match it with an equally clear explanation of select 
methods. =:^\  Never-the-less, depending on the program, one or all of 
the following, in general very similar to the way one would do it on MS, 
generally works.  Multi-select using:

1) Drag a "rubber-band" across the items you wish to select.  (Note that 
you don't want to start the selection-drag directly on a file, or it will 
try to drag that file, not create a selection-lasso.  Depending on how 
closely the items are packed or how clicking the area around them is 
interpreted, this can be a bit difficult in some apps.  I often have that 
problem with gwenview, for instance; less so with dolphin.)

2) Once a selection is created, the ctrl and shift modifiers work much as 
they did on MS:

2a) Shift-click to range-extend the selection from the item last clicked.

2b) Ctrl-click to toggle selection of individual items.  (Thus, one can 
start with a "rubber-band selection" to select several lines of icons 
including one or two more than you really wanted, then ctrl-click on the 
ones you did NOT want selected to un-select them while keeping the others 
selected.)

3) For those who prefer keyboard-only selection, as on MS, arrow keys 
navigate and space toggles an individual selection.

3a) Similar to #2, shift-space does a range-selection, and...

3b) Ctrl-space toggles individual icons in and out of the selection.

4) Additionally, KDE apps at least now generally have the hover-plus 
overlay-icon selection method, where hovering over an icon should produce 
a green "+" icon overlaid over the original icon, which if clicked should 
select that item, doing multi-select automatically if something else was 
already selected.  Dolphin, gwenview and konqueror all three do this, I 
believe, as well as the plasma folderview plasmoid and container.

4a) If the icon is selected, there's a red minus-overlay icon (-) 
instead, allowing to unselect just that item.

5) The usual select-all keyboard shortcut is generally available as 
well.  (Here it's the old MS ctrl-a shortcut, but I've so highly 
customized things here that IDR if that's the default or not.)  Coupled 
with a selective-display feature such as dolphin's filters, this works 
well for selecting all of a particular type of file.

Once the desired multi-selection is done, Kevin's copy/move instructions 
should work just fine. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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