Foreword

The Orthodox File Managers (OFMs) that are also known as "Commanders" are remote descendants of  Norton Commander (NC) written by John Socha and first released in 1986 for MS DOS. Despite Spartan interface (or, more correctly, due to it) Orthodox file managers provide an extremely rich functionality, unsurpassed by any other type of file managers. Including a unique way of shell and file manager integration via user menu with a set of macrovariables as well as shell terminal window, making them natural sysadmin IDE. Due to unique blend of power, flexibility and portability they became the tool of choice for system administrators, especially in xUSSR region, Eastern Europe, Germany and Scandinavian countries. Those regions were place of birth of the most impressive OFM implementations such as Far, Total Commander, deco, Volkov Commander, Dos Navigator, Altap Salamander and many others.

The importance of this type of file managers is connected with a very high productivity of advanced users and the portability (the OFM is the only portable file manager known to the author). OFMs can be found on a large variety of operating system including  various flavors of UNIX, OS/2,  all existing versions of DOS, and Windows . They are an essential tool for system administrators, especially NetWare and UNIX system administrators.  The current stage of development is explored, several classical ( NC5, DN, VC, FAR, FC, deco, MC, etc.) and GUI-based (Total Commander, Norton Commander for Windows 95, WinSCP, EmelFM2, Krusader, etc.)  implementations are reviewed and recommendations for future development are proposed.

The author believes that OFMs should become an important tool not only for system administrators, but for WEB masters. The most important role of OFMs is to simplify file management and here new interesting directions are now open with the introduction of plugins in FAR, Total Commander, EmelFM2 and several other OFMs.

OFMs can definitely help to attract new users to Linux and FreeBSD. Midnight Commander now seems to be a leading implementation for Linux is now included into set of RPM avalable from the installation DVD for both Red Hat and Suse distributions.  Index of this site provides additional information and discussion of the open source software).

I would like not to absolutize the value of open source in comparison with other institutional forms of developing software. The most important part is to have a standard for OFM-style file managers. This book is modest contribution to this important goal.

There are three fundamental properties of Orthodox file managers:

1. Conservative (as in "far from being fancy"),  very stable (25 years without major changes), very flexible interface with two symmetrical windows (called panels, with trademark white on blue letters, by default) that hides behind Spartan interface very rich functionality. It really teaches us that "less is more"
2. One "terminal style" window that initially is minimized to a single line at the bottom of panels, but can be expanded to full screen, half-screen or any number of lines. The user can work in this window like with regular console screen.
3. Additional way of integration with the underling OS shell via so called User menu and extension menu using the same set of macro variables that are available for command line, which is also used in the built-in editor, providing an opportunity to pipe result of the shell script execution to the place after the cursor or pipe a selected block as input of some script.

At the end of the book three standards for OFM are proposed. A simple "Orthodox Manager Compatibility Test" is imcluded with Orthodox File Managers Standard 1999(OFM1999) - minimal OFM requirements.  It measures measures the level of compliance of a particular file manager with the proposed standard and contains four parts: "Basic compatibility", "Virtual file systems support", "Modern extensions" and "Recommended extensions/Wish list".

Nikolai Bezroukov

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

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Last modified: March 12, 2019