RISC OS-like file explorer (Filer) in Python

Introduction

The modules in this repository provide a means by which a scrollable window can be created which shows files in a similar style to the RISC OS filer. The scrollable window is implemented in WxPython.

The code was originally written to allow RISC OS Pyromaniac to browse the file system of the provided OS. It has been extracted to a separate module as it may be more generally useful.

Structure

In order to display the explorer window, the source for the files to display must be provided. This source is based on the FSBase, FSDirectoryBase and FSFileBase classes in the fs module. These classes abstract access to the file system.

The FSBase class provides core access to the file system mostly dealing with the handling of filenames and obtaining access to a directory. The file system can have different schemes for file names, to allow both POSIX and RISC OS filename conventions to be used.

The FSDirectoryBase class provides enumeration of the files in a directory and their details. The objects provide access to the files through the FSFileBase objects.

The FSFileBase class provides information and access to the files on the file system.

These 3 classes should be subclassed to get access to the actual file system. The fsnative module provides subclasses for access to the POSIX file system. Within RISC OS Pyromaniac, similar subclasses provide access to the RISC OS file system.

The fsexplorer module contains an FSExplorerFrame which provides the implementation of the file explorer interface. This frame can show the files and open directories and files. The RISC OS semantics of opening a new window are followed unless the alternate mouse operation is performed (right-click in RISC OS model, or control/command left click in the non-RISC OS model). Selections are available and multiple files can be selected. Activating files by double click is supported but does nothing in the default implementation.

An FSExplorers object may be passed to the FSExplorerFrame on creation, to track the existing explorer windows that have been opened. This allows them to be raised if they are re-opened whilst they are open.

The icons for the files are provided in the icons directory.

Example

An example app, app.py is provided, which demonstrates the use of the frame, and which is used for manually testing the behaviour.