view every items in a folder (and its subfolders)

[Anonymous]

Here's my suggestion:

Sometimes I'd like to compare items that are in different subfolders of a given folder. So it would be cool to be able to switch to a "list all included items"-view, where one could sort items by size, date, etc. Arborescence would not necessarily have to be indicated (or in a smart way, e. g. when pointing the mouse over some item).

Is this something you understand? I'm not sure it's very clear.

[bill]

If I'm reading you right, you'd like to be able to compare everything inside a given folder as if they were all at the same level, even if some items are inside nested folders.

IOW, say you've got a folder named Books. Inside books are the subfolders HTML, PDF and Text. HTML has two files, HTML1 and HTML2, PDF has two files, PDF1 and PDF2 and Text also has two files, naturally named Text1 and Text2. If you look at the folder Books in, call it it comparison view, it'd look like Books had the following items: HTML (folder), PDF (folder), Text (folder), HTML1 (file), HTML2 (file), PDF1 (file), PDF2 (file), Text1 (file) and Text2 (file). It would look as if they're all at the Books/ level.

Is this what you're getting at?

[latelio]

Thank you very much, Bill, for making more explicit what I wanted to suggest. There are some consequences to that kind of "comparison view":

- It could contain files or folders having the same name, as they could belong to different subfolders. This would be very useful to track identical items located at different locations within one parent folder.

- the hierarchical status of every item (files and (sub)folders) should ideally be visible (is item X located in a parent folder, in a subfolder or even further down in nested folders?). This might be very difficult to manage as some people manage to go very far in hierarchical nesting…

- it should be made clear that such a view is different from every other kind of view accessible in Pathfinder.

I think "comparison" or "X-ray" view could be useful for different purposes:
- get a quick overview of all items in a folder with many subfolders.
- sort such folders by size, date.
- find identical files located in different subfolders.

The idea ist not without a certain risk (you might easily mess up existing folder structures), but I think it is definitely worth a serious thought.

Daniel