I never want to see document view mode, and I can prevent it (I think) for a document like so:
Sadly, doing that for hundreds of folders is tedious, as it only works one document at a time:
As you can see, the option is greyed out. Better yet, I want to apply it globally, to every project 'til the end of time.
Can you improve this feature, folks?
The group view mode is itself “permanent” in the sense that all folders (and file groups, if they’re set in preferences to act like folders) will always use the last group view set. If you’ve set it to corkboard for one folder, all other folders in the project will load in corkboard until you change it to something else. So unless you’ve set it to the single document view, your folders will never load that way. New projects usually start with the corkboard as the default group view, but you should only have to change it once to make it whatever you want. You could even create a new project template set up with your preferred group view if you felt that adamant about it. (You could set it up with whatever else you want in a starter project, too.)
Locking a folder to a specific group view mode is meant to be for the odd case out, when you have a folder that you do always want to load in a specific view mode that you’re otherwise not typically using. It doesn’t prevent you changing the view for that folder, either–it just would switch the “lock” to that new view, so that particular folder would continue to open in that view regardless of what current view mode everything else was using.
The short of that is, I don’t think locking the group view mode is what you need, even if it were capable of being set on many folders simultaneously, since the problem should already be solvable by leaving the view mode for folders on whatever view it is you want. Maybe then I’m not understanding the specific case where this isn’t working for you?
EDIT: Just saw your other thread on this, which would be the bit I was missing, that you’re encountering some kind of bug in the behaviour. Given that, I see why you’d want to try locking everything; it’s not the design intention, as I said–it’s meant to be the unusual case, rather than the norm–which is why it’s not currently applicable to multiple folders at a time.
So, since you can’t set it afterward on multiple files, to alleviate this a bit going forward you could set up a document template for a folder locked to the group view you want, then use that for generating new folders in your project. You could even use Documents > Default Template for Subdocuments to set that folder as the default for the Draft, Research, etc., although you’d probably then also want to create a new blank document template to set as the default subdocument for the locked folder (setting that up in the template itself, so that your locked folders will generate new text documents by default rather than more folders).
If that’s the best we can do, it’ll have to suffice. I’ve created a System Preferences shortcut to Lock Group View Mode, That will help a bit, but it’s simply not true (here) that putting a folder in group mode is reliably “sticky”.
Yes it is. One you put a folder in a group view mode, whenever you click on other folders, the other folders open in that mode. (If you navigate using document history, things are different, since history remembers the mode you were viewing, but clicking on folders in the binder always uses the last group view mode selected.) If you can find a case where this isn’t happening, then please provide instructions for us to reproduce it.
I repeat. I can not show you how to reproduce it. It’s random.
BUT I laboriously set EVERY folder to “lock group mode” a couple days ago and found one in document mode last night (with the lock turned off). I never, ever, select document mode and haven’t selected outline mode in months, so I don’t know how this happens. I only know that it does.
Is it possible we’re talking past each other somehow? For instance, can clicking on a file, then clicking on a folder cause this behavior? What would I have to do to make it happen?
We’ve covered all of the designed instances where this can happen, in this and the previous thread. That’s why we’re down to the point of looking for a step by step approach to seeing something happen we’ve never seen happen. Those exceptional cases aside, there really are no designed instances where folders will spontaneously stop using group view mode in an individual manner, and certainly no cases where the locked group view mode will be unlocked behind your back. If that is definitely what happened, then yes that probably a bug of some sort.
I think maybe the only exception not covered previously are search results? By default groups always use text mode when navigated to from a search result—since their reason for being in the search result list is most often for having some hit in the main text area. That feature can be disabled in the Behaviors: Folders & Files preference pane, with Show folder text when selected from search results.
There are other cases—but nothing relevant. For example if you load a folder in a Copyholder, Quick Reference or Composition Mode, it will always show its text—but I’m sure that’s not what you’re talking about since you’d have a 100% hit rate.
Finally, a theory that MAY explain what I’m seeing.
I’m rewriting and editing the book (endlessly), so I do a lot of searching for words I want to change, character names, et cetera, and editing the documents that come up. My folders are empty, though, so maybe it happens if I search “All”, find a word in the title of a folder, and click on it?
Huh. I can test that, so I will.
Yes, folders open in document mode (that is, I don’t see the documents they contain), but the “lock” is still in place. When I clear the search box and select the same folder, I get group mode, so I still can’t replicate the problem. Maybe I misunderstood your explanation.
By the way, I use RegEx search nearly all the time. Could that change anything?
I’ll try the Behaviors setting you mentioned and see if anything changes.
Wait … the checkbox there was already set. Do you mean me to turn it off?
If I do, then I won’t see the text of a folder shown as the result of a search?
Never mind, I do see the text, so I don’t understand the checkbox description. No instances so far of the strange behavior, but it’s early days.
Right, the default condition is to show the text of groups/folders in search results. So turning it off would make clicking on folders as search results act like folders—and thereby use the locked group view mode if applicable.
Not initially, that is the point of the preference; though one can always flip between viewing a group as a collection of things and as a text document by toggling the current group view mode off. Granted, that sets your split’s preferred group view mode to document mode (as should be well known by now, ha!), and in your case it will lock the group to text view since you use that setting everywhere. So—just be mindful of that.
That’s how it should work, yes. This default behaviour places a temporary override on how folders/groups work in search results, that’s all. If you’re looking for an explanation on how a folder’s group view setting got changed—this isn’t it. It’s a possible explanation for how one might sometimes see folders as text files though, if they haven’t noticed the connection between clicking on them in a search result list vs the binder/standard collections.
It’s doubtful that would have any impact. How a search result list came to be isn’t of much important to the code that handles how the search result list works.
AmberV,
I do see the text within folders in this situation, both initially and later. What I do not see initially is the text of subordinate files. I think the checkbox description is inaccurate.
This search behavior doesn’t explain the behavior I’ve seen unless it holds over to a time when I’ve cleared the search, which so far I haven’t seen.
I’ll let you know if the problem recurs.
Thanks!
P.S. As I’ve said before, it may not be worthwhile for either of us to worry about this. It can be “the principle of the thing”, of course, since you don’t intend it to happen the way I’m seeing it happen,
FYI, the problem hasn’t recurred in a few weeks. Maybe I finally got it right.
