Hiya,
Short and simple, I’d like to be able to open shortcut folders in the disk browser.
I have my folder of field recording samples in my dropbox folder and a shortcutfolder in my general samples folder.
That shortcut doesn’t show up in the diskbrowser, pleaaasee add this ‘feature’!
Shortcuts are a feature that is specific to Windows. They do not really show up as a ‘real’ part of the file system. They are just a special type of file that Windows handles separately, and then re-routes you to the correct location. To handle these files in Renoise, we’d also have to add special handling just for that special filetype, which is a bit of a pain in the ass for us since it may change without warning, or may differ with each version of Windows.
If you want to create ‘real’ shortcuts that will show up as part of the file system, and will therefore be useable in Renoise, you must create a symbolic link from one location to another.
There are various ways to do this, including doing it manually via the command line, or using an Explorer shell extension that makes it easier. I’ll leave it up to you to choose the method that’s most comfortable for you.
You can easily find the information by searching Google: How to create symbolic links in Windows
Here’s one quick example that I’ve just tested, and can confirm that it works perfectly in Renoise:
http://www.windows7home.net/how-to-create-symbolic-link-in-windows-7/
dblue is right. adding functionality like this which will only benefit users on a single platform is not very useful. i think there’d be a lot more to say for all of the other suggestions that have been done for improvements on the disk browser (like paths, for example). these would work on every system and make the whole thing a lot more usable.
Well I didn’t know that it was so hard. It’s one of the only things Ableton Live has but Renoise doesn’t. It didn’t seem like a big program issue to me but apparently I was wrong. Thanks for the explanation dblue, I’ll look into it.
It needs a warning though:
Creating symbolic links also comes with dangers if you never worked with those. (Like thinking you delete a non relevant copy of a folder while you actually erase the actual folder)
If you create a symbolic link, aka “soft link”, then it’s usually not a problem. You can actually delete the symbolic/soft link without affecting the original file or folder.
However, if you create a “hard link”, then you do indeed need to be careful. Deleting a hard link can also delete the file or folder it links to.