Caja without side pane

[Urs Gasser]

Hi Martin

I really enjoyed your conversation on "Destination Linux EP15", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR8VnDZx_IU !

The other day I noticed a behaviour of Caja on Ubuntu-Mate that I found annoying:
I wrote a shell script that opens a particular folder at a time, something like "xdg-open .", which would open the local folder in the Caja file manager in Mate from the bash command line. This is equivalent to MS Windows "start ." . Coming from Windows and using Windows 7 at work, I wanted the exact same behaviour, with the file manager opening in its full glory, with navigation bar (side pane) etc. And I also wanted, instead of opening countless numbers of windows for the same path when launching "xdg-open .", that the OS just put the focus on the window which was already open, but buried maybe under other windows.
So I worked through the prefrences in Caja and found the important setting:

Caja > Edit > Preferences > Behavior
(x) open each folder in its own window

However, the Window did not get the focus yet. So I googled around and found that the Compiz Window Manager was what I needed. OK. Switching to Compiz, I got this working now :-)
The only thing that really annoyed me was that the Caja window was now stripped of the side pane used for navigating to other parts of the file system -- something you will do quite often, once a file manager window is open. It is simply an important part of the functionality of a file manager. And Windows does it too -- some 'standard'?? just kidding.

I figured out the following work-around to fix this:

sudo bash
cd /usr/bin
ls caja
file caja
mv caja caja1
echo "" > caja2
sudo pluma caja2
#!/bin/sh
caja1 --no-desktop --browser $1 $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9
save file
chmod +x caja2

ls caja
no file --> good! (just to be safe)

cp caja2 caja

And it worked!

I think you'll understand the shorthand. My point is: The average Ubuntu-Mate user won't be able to find that work-around. There should be some setting in the preferences to achieve just that. Or maybe, the file manager should not lose its side pane at all, as a standard behaviour.

I just thought this input may help to make Ubuntu-Mate an even greater distro. Many thanks in advance for considering this bug report / feature request.

I hope you enjoy a sunny week-end in Britain as we have here in Switzerland.

Cheers
Urs