preselector option, issue #395

[Naheel-Azawy]

As discussed in issue #395, here's my quick implementation.

[Naheel-Azawy]

I don't have access to a macOS machine. Anyone have any clue why the macOS tests failed?

[junegunn]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm not really into the idea.

It looks to me that the implementation is mostly for niche use cases such as yours, and I don't see much point in building a file manager with fzf. Because,

1. fzf was designed to be an interactive grep rather than a framework for building TUI applications so I think the requirement here is beyond the scope of the project and adding this would lead to feature bloat.
2. We already have nice terminal file managers such as ranger, nnn, and xplr (which even states that it was inspired by fzf). The one built using fzf with duct tapes won't be able to compete with them in terms of features and functionality.

[Naheel-Azawy]

I thought a lot before making this pull request. I was worried in particular about the feature bloat. But I've been using my file manager for more than a week and sometimes it gets so frustrating when it jumps back to the beginning. I thought about it and said to myself maybe adding one little option isn't much of a bloat. This might be just my personal opinion though.

I use fzf as a dmenu alternative too. This preselector could also help jump to different items in the menu depending on the context. And who knows, perhaps someone else find it useful somehow. Not sure if it would be considered as bloat or not in this case; I guess not.

As of why did I make yet another file manager, I have briefly discussed it in my readme. I tried many other file managers, except xplr, this is the first time I see it. They all are pretty cool. Every one of them has its advantages and disadvantages. My personal favorite used to be lf. But regardless of the file manager I use, I end up using fzf inside of it more than using the file manager itself. I'm not planning to compete with any of them. I'm just trying to build something simple that does not exceed a single posix shell script. Other file managers are, in my opinion, bigger and more complex that they should.

I believe that file managers can be simpler than what exist out there and I guess I could proved it with fmz, at least to myself.

I guess I talked a lot, just expressing my thoughts. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe I get rid of my fmz someday. But as of now, I'm pretty happy with it and I do find myself a bit more productive using it. It's fine if you still find it unnecessary. After all it's just a personal opinion. Let me know what you think.

[Naheel-Azawy]

Hi @junegunn, it has been a while. Any thoughts on this?