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If you are only using dolphin for the browsing, the case where you are using symlinks as a shortcut to jump to another directory could be covered by using .desktop shortcut files instead of symlinks. This only works for some file managers and doesn't work from the command-line without some back bending.

airdrik wrote:Of course, most of those tools (at least most of the command-line tools for manipulating paths) allow for resolving symlinks (or acquiring the real path) or at least showing that symlinks were followed. Perhaps it could be useful to mark (highlight in a different color) symlinks in the crumb trail in Dolphin and have a context menu to resolve the symlink.

That's something which sounds really a good solution for this. Overview is kept and the information can be resolved without the need to change "normal" behavior.

Nevertheless I have to say that when I read through this topic and the whole section (like in the "sort by extension" topic as well) I encounter a lot of "Windows-Phobia"- I am plain forced to use more than one OS, so I am working with Windows, Linux and OSX- and each is having its advantages and disadvantages. When it comes to my personal opinion I like Linux the most because of its very flexible and logical way to handle things, but that doesn't mean that everything coming from Windows must be wrong or bad. It seems to be that a lot of people here literally love to trash ideas only because it could be remotely related or originated from Windows (users) - honestly, what's wrong with you guys? The idea is to make the best for the user, to neglect things directly just because they are not the "oldstyle Unix" way seems to be far from living your own philosophy.
Hell people even tend to justify themselves here, claiming to be "Unix" users for years just to make such an idea finding serious attention. Really, for people developing software for an open OS like Linux this behavior is paradox. Is this just fear or false pride? I find that really disturbing.

Smirftsch wrote:

airdrik wrote:Of course, most of those tools (at least most of the command-line tools for manipulating paths) allow for resolving symlinks (or acquiring the real path) or at least showing that symlinks were followed. Perhaps it could be useful to mark (highlight in a different color) symlinks in the crumb trail in Dolphin and have a context menu to resolve the symlink.

That's something which sounds really a good solution for this. Overview is kept and the information can be resolved without the need to change "normal" behavior.

Nevertheless I have to say that when I read through this topic and the whole section (like in the "sort by extension" topic as well) I encounter a lot of "Windows-Phobia"- I am plain forced to use more than one OS, so I am working with Windows, Linux and OSX- and each is having its advantages and disadvantages. When it comes to my personal opinion I like Linux the most because of its very flexible and logical way to handle things, but that doesn't mean that everything coming from Windows must be wrong or bad. It seems to be that a lot of people here literally love to trash ideas only because it could be remotely related or originated from Windows (users) - honestly, what's wrong with you guys? The idea is to make the best for the user, to neglect things directly just because they are not the "oldstyle Unix" way seems to be far from living your own philosophy.
Hell people even tend to justify themselves here, claiming to be "Unix" users for years just to make such an idea finding serious attention. Really, for people developing software for an open OS like Linux this behavior is paradox. Is this just fear or false pride? I find that really disturbing.

My perspective on some of these debates is that it isn't so much a "Windows-phobia" as a reluctance to take on ideas merely because they exist on other platforms (be it Windows, Gnome, Mac, whatever) without other reasons for why it would be beneficial to KDE and its users other than "it will make users switching from platform P to feel more comfortable". It often sounds like a "Windows-phobia" because there are a lot of (ex-)windows users which leads to a pretty loud voice of people saying "we should support more windows features to make the largest market share of users more comfortable switching to KDE" (and quite often: "we should support feature X from windows that I miss after switching to KDE and I think there are a lot of other windows users who will miss it too, so KDE should support it").
As evidence that there isn't a "Windows-phobia" per se, there have been a number of features that Windows had first that have been adopted by KDE because the KDE community decided that they were worth implementing. Examples that come to my mind include things like the aero snap and aero peak features and the icon-only task manager.
In short, the aversion isn't to features from Windows, the aversion is to features which don't have clear benefits to KDE users - features whose sole benefit is to support users switching from other platforms. (there just happen to be quite a few features from Windows that have been (at least initially) rejected because they were cited with only that for their benefit)

you really have a point there and I understand fully your point of view, but often it doesn't seem to be that way, hence my impression.
Either way, the usefulness of a particular feature should be the scale and nothing else.

Smirftsch wrote:

airdrik wrote:Of course, most of those tools (at least most of the command-line tools for manipulating paths) allow for resolving symlinks (or acquiring the real path) or at least showing that symlinks were followed. Perhaps it could be useful to mark (highlight in a different color) symlinks in the crumb trail in Dolphin and have a context menu to resolve the symlink.

That's something which sounds really a good solution for this. Overview is kept and the information can be resolved without the need to change "normal" behavior.

+1 for visually highlighting in the crumb trail that a symlink is involved. Currently a symlink has got italic font style when shown in the folder view. Hence, I suggest to also use italic font on directory names which in fact are symlinks in the crumb trail.

+1 for then having a context menu entry in the crumb trail: "Goto original folder" or more technically "Resolve symlink".
Additionally, one could add the Ctrl modifier resolve a symlink when clicking on a symlink crumb trail element => Ctrl+Click would resolve the symlink.

RGB wrote:User case: inside the folder
~/Documents
you have a symlink to the folder
~/Images/Manual
when you click the symlink you are "teleported" to ~/Images/Manual, but the address bar on Dolphin shows
~/Documents/Manual
instead of the real path. This is counter intuitive and confusing because it shows a fake folder tree. In fact, clicking "up" will move you to ~/Documents if you arrived through the symlink, but will move you to ~/Images if you arrived on any other way. Really confusing.
There should be an option to make Dolphin show real paths.

I have made a symlink, like you did, in Documents and called it Pictures. The link points to the Pictures folder, ~/Pictures. It automatically gets the icon of my Pictures folder, which is a webcam.
Clicking the link brings me to ~/Documents/Pictures, right where I want to be.
Clicking either "Back" or "Up" brings me back to the Documents folder.

Going one step deeper I noticed something strange.
I changed the link to ~/Pictures/Wallpapers. Icon changed to a blue folder, with an arrow and on the blue folder I see pictures which are inside the Wallpapers folder. (Preview look in Dolphin)
In terminal it looks like this:

Code: Select all

lrwxrwxrwx  1 jan jan     29 jan  1 09:19 Pictures -> /home/jan/Pictures/Wallpapers

Clicking the link brings me to ~/Documents/Pictures, same as before. Clicking the Wallpaper folder now gives me an error stating: ~/Documents/Pictures/Wallpapers does not exist. That is correct, but the link should have brought me to the Wallpapers folder already but it didn't do that.

So how did you manage to go to your Images/Manual folder by using the link, when I am stuck one lever higher?

When you clicked on the Pictures shortcut after changing it to point to ~/Pictures/Wallpapers, it should have shown you the contents of the ~/Pictures/Wallpapers folder. If it did not (which seems apparant since it still showed a Wallpapers directory), it may have been remembering something it shouldn't have. Try refreshing to make sure it updates to the correct contents.

Hi, it is 2020.

If I drag the folder icon in Dolphin (that is next to the current directory path) to my desktop and "link here" I get a symbolic link that if followed, is not resolved properly. i.e. I now see "/home/user/Desktop/linked-folder-name" in the Dolphin path.

This is ridiculous!

How do we request a feature to fully resolve the path in Dolphin?

In my opinion, there should be a possibility to select path part and change to real path and vice versa (Dolphin should remember path to each symlink we travel).

It could be useful to go level higher than current (for example).

It could be useful for places like last places. You can select directory in open file dialog from last places, and go up in directory hierarchy or VF hierarchy.

Maybe display previous path, when go to symlink below current path and previous path of symlink also below. Additionally, use line separator (plain line).

For example:
/moved_data/projects/a <- current path
__________________
/home/Lachu/projects <- symlink path
------------------------------
/users <- another symlink, but for /home


Alternatively:
/moved_data/projects/a <- current path
__________________
/home/Lachu/projects ; /a <- symlink path + subdirectory
------------------------------
/users ; /Lachu/projects/a <- as above

+1

Not a change to the default behavior (which follows the underlying architecture) but for an added option to quickly display the resolved path in the location bar. Having the choice easily accessible would be very useful in all kinds of situations.

In the mean time, (and, forgive me if this has already been suggested earlier in this thread). my quick work around :

press F4 (to bring up dolphin's built in terminal window, pre-navigated to the directory you are viewing - i.e the path displayed in the location bar)
in the terminal, type:

Code: Select all

pwd -P

Your shell will display the resolved path.
Select the path, and SHIFT + CTRL + C to copy it.

Not a work around for all situations (like drag and drop), but if you need access to the resolved path, this works quite quickly.

Still would be user friendly to have an intuitive GUI solution.

Mario Storti wrote:I add my just 2 cents to the question. I'm pro the possibility to add
a "cd -P" behavior (as optional) to symlinks.

The reason is that I use symlinks for two situations. The first is when I
need to make a local copy in a certain path of a directory or file
that is in other directory. But I do a symlink instead of copying the
file because this way I save space and also I don't duplicate
information; if I modify one of the files I modify the other. I think
that this is more like using the symlink as a hardlink, but with the
known advantages that symlinks have over hardlinks.

The other case is when I want to have some folder where I put work
directories, so that when I click on that icon (in Dolphin) I'm
teleported to that directory. In that case I want to follow the
symlink (i.e. "cd -P").

The ideal would be to right click on the symlink and
to have the option for choosing between the two behaviors.

I discovered just now that the behavior I asked for was indeed already there. You have to right click on the symlink and choose "Show Target".

I feel your pain. One of the things I had to solve before being able to move from Windows to KDE was the lack of proper teleportation links (that would preferably even work on both operating systems).

I resolved it partly by a Python script that reads and follows lnk-files (using LnkParse3 library). It supports both directory and url targets. I've associated the script with lnk-files. As they contain relative directory paths, this works great, can be found here:
https://github.com/spiregarden/readlnk

Would it be feasable to create a plugin that allows creating lnk files in Dolphin. All problems solved, aye?