"Last Active Lister" option for virtual desktops

[alvypender]

Description

Hi! I love QuickSwitch — it's incredibly useful in my daily workflow.
I'd like to suggest a feature enhancement if possible. I work extensively with virtual desktops, and currently your script correctly detects the paths from the Directory Opus instance that's on the user's active virtual desktop. For example, if there are two instances of Directory Opus — one on Virtual Desktop 1 and another on Virtual Desktop 2 — and Quick Switch is triggered from Virtual Desktop 2, it picks up the paths from that desktop's instance. This works great.
What I'd love is a new toggle option in the menu that changes this behavior. The default would remain as it is now (detecting paths from the current virtual desktop). But when enabled, the new option would instead pull the paths from the last active lister/instance of Directory Opus, regardless of which virtual desktop it's on. So for example: if I'm working with an Opus instance on Desktop 1, then switch to Desktop 3 and trigger Quick Switch, it would recognize the paths from the last active lister — in this case, the one on Desktop 1.
This would be a huge quality-of-life improvement for virtual desktop users. Thanks for the great work!

[JoyHak]

"Last active lister" would be a confusing name for users who do not use Virtual Desks. However, it is also possible to combine this option with one desktop with multiple Listers. In this case Menu will display tabs starting from the previous active Lister, not the active one.

Can you suggest the names for this option to reflect that behavior?

[JoyHak]

Please try 1.9.11 and 1.9.12. There's two variants to choose from depending on a version:

1.9.11

• Active lister only: displays paths only from the active instance of each supported file manager. E.g. current active instance of XYplorer, plus current active instance of Dopus, etc.

• Last active lister only: displays paths only from the last active instance of each supported file manager.

  Both options also include displaying paths from virtual desktops. Available on Settings > Theme tab.

1.9.12

• Z-order index: displays paths from a single window (instance) of each supported file manager. The window can be selected by index in order of use (Z-order or Alt-Tab order). The active file manager has index 1, the recently opened one has index 2, and so on. This option allows you to ignore other windows.
  
• Virtual desktops: displays all paths from all file managers if the Z-index is 0 (see above) or displays the paths from lister according to the selected index. If you recently opened a file manager in another desktop ("Last Active Lister" option for virtual desktops #162), select index 2 to see its paths.
  

1.9.11 is simple, but 1.9.12 is powerful. Please share your opinion and ideas how to improve them.

Theres also a new option that supports Dopus:

• Active pane only: displays paths only from the active pane of each supported file manager. The active tab will be the first one from each manager regardless of this option. If the adjacent Show locked tabs is checked and all tabs from the active pane of some manager are locked, paths from this manager will not be displayed.

[alvypender]

Thank you very much for adding this feature. In my particular case, the Z-order works very well — I usually jump directly to other virtual desktops and keep my main lister on virtual desktop 1. I'll keep testing, but so far everything works great.
There are just two things I noticed while using it:

Sometimes when I open My Documents, Pictures, or Downloads using the Opus library icons, it returns paths like:
lib://Pictures
lib://Documents
When these paths are passed to QuickSwitch, it gets stuck in an infinite error loop showing a message that says "the filename is not valid". I'm not sure if it's possible to fix this — maybe by ignoring these library paths or by resolving them to their actual filesystem paths.
QuickSwitch keeps updating the path in the file dialog after it has already been opened. It might be a good idea for QuickSwitch to only switch the path once, when the dialog first opens. In some cases I want to keep navigating manually within the dialog, but QuickSwitch sends me back to the lister's path. I think it would be more useful if QuickSwitch only activates on the initial opening of the dialog.

That's the feedback I have for now. Thank you!

[JoyHak]

it gets stuck in an infinite error loop showing a message that says "the filename is not valid".

I can't fix lib:// paths because they are part of limitations, but I can try to fix infinite loop. Pleasy try 1.9.13 and attach Errors.log here.