Customize file info

[Lassebq]

There should be a way to modify what the bottom line displays. Even ranger has some color in it. (file permissions display in cyan) while in lf it's just gray string.
I would like to make it the same as exa's output:

[joelim-work]

Currently there's no support for configuring this.

I guess it would be possible to add a fileinfofmt option similar to the promptfmt option, where you can specify what fields you want displayed and insert terminal sequences for style/coloring. Though I'm not sure whether it's worth supporting different colors for each letter in the permission flags.

[ilyagr]

I'm also leaning against making this configurable. At least, I wouldn't want to do it myself. The way @joelim-work suggested seems best, but I'm not a fan of how complex promptfmt is and it doesn't seem fun to implement another mini-language like it does.

However, I'll mention that if you're OK with compiling a Go program, it'd be quite easy to colorize the status bar by editing the format string mentioned in #1103 (comment) and recompiling. You would need to use the same ANSI escape sequences as in promptfmt. Making different permissions letters have different colors would be a bit harder, but no harder than making an external script doing it.

[joelim-work]

To be clear, I don't mind making this configurable by adding a fileinfofmt option as this has been suggested in #1103 before. The only thing I'm against is implementing something complex like applying styles to part of a field (e.g. a separate color for each letter in the file permissions).

I'm thinking of copying the default from ranger and use set fileinfofmt "\033[36m%p\033[0m %c %u %g %s %t %l" where:

• %p is the file permissions
• %c is the link count
• %u is the user
• %g is the group
• %s is the size
• %t is the last modified time
• %l is the link target including the -> arrow (if exists)

[ilyagr]

If you're up for doing it, sounds good!

I have already thought of a couple of very minor quibbles:

For the link target, I like the -> that lf prints. I suppose we could have a version of %l that includes it.

Subjectively, I'm not sure about changing the default to color the permissions. I don't think it will necessarily look better. To me, it seems relevant the user enters commands on the same line, and the command-line doesn't have color. If we color the permissions, OTOH, maybe we should also color the command-line prompt symbol (>,$, etc.).

(The point about color is not a hill I'm willing to die on, though, and I might even change my mind.)

---

As an aside, the only things I'd want to change for myself (I'm not suggesting doing this by default) is to get rid of the link count and maybe the group.

[joelim-work]

Oh yeah I meant for %l to include the arrow, I have amended the description above. I don't think it's worth customising the behaviour of the arrow for now, format strings in general have trouble handling text that is conditional on the presence of other fields.

Regarding the defaults, I don't think it matters too much anyway since the user will be able to customise it.

[ilyagr]

Re arrow: if we really want to, we could have %l that doesn't have the arrow and %L that does include it. Both of these would be empty if the file is not a link.