HOWTO

Preface

The main idea behind this development was to make the file manipulation on an Android device easier, especially for the people who are familiar with such brilliant software as Total Commander and the like.

Below is a short overview of the program and a few tips on working with it.

Panel Modes

The application works in two modes, one at a time:

"Overlapped" panels mode
"Side-by-side" panels mode

Overlapped Mode
In the overlapped mode, you will see only one panel on the top. The other, inactive panel is hidden "behind". On the following picture the current active panel is the left one, we can tell that because the left path ("/" here) is selected in the header.

Side-by-side mode
In this mode, both panels seen at the same time:

Switching Between Panels

To activate the second (inactive) panel, you can do any of the following:

Tap on that panel's title or the panel itself in the side-by-side mode.
Press the "Tab" key if you're happy owner of a device with physical keyboard
Press the "volume down" button.
Press the "left" arrow button (that ability must be enabled in the settings)

The active panel's header is highlighted (blue on these sample pictures).

File View

Folders are marked with the '/' character ahead or behind of the folder's name. When sorted, the folders will always be shown before the files.

The files size abbreviations are 'K' for kilobytes and 'M' for megabytes. Unless otherwise stated, assume the size is in bytes.

If the file was created in the current year, the date field will contain the time of last modification omitting the year.

If the file does not have a date, that means the system does not provide one.
The size and date fields could be always placed below the file name, see the settings

Selecting Files

To select a file or a folder, do one of the following:

Tap on the right half of the file's row.
Press the "volume up" key
Press the "right arrow" key (if enabled in the settings)

Selected files are highlighted. If no files/folders are selected, the focused item (amber on most devices) will be used in the file operations.
(Due to Android UI behavior, the focused item is not highlighted in the "touch" mode - that's it, when you touch the screen it disappears.)

To select many files and folders in the current directory by a name pattern, press '+'; to unselect all, press '-' (These commands are also accessible from the main menu->"List").

Entering a Folder Path and Manage the Favorites

To enter a new folder path in the address bar editor, do one of the following:

Long click on the panel's header,
long click on the root row ('..' or '/') then select from the menu,
press the '(' or ')' key,
go Menu->Panels->Location.

There, you can type in a desired folder's name or an appropriate URI and then hit "Go".
The editor's drop-down list contains names and addresses stored as favorites.
The star on the left side of the address bar indicates is the current entered location stored as a favorite.
Click on the star to add/remove the location's name to/from the favorites list.

While in regular working mode, you can also press the '' key on your keyboard to mark the current location as a favorite
or do the same via the main menu->Locations->" Favorite the current folder".

Note, you can also favorite not only the local folders, but remote locations, like FTP sites or Samba shares.

Occupied Size Calculator

You can get the total size of the selected files or folders of the local file system (only). Do it from the content menu (long click on an item you want to know the size of) or by pressing the '"' key.
After a short calculation delay, the resulting dialog box will appear, displaying the statistics like shown below:

After this calculation the participated folders will show their total sizes as well as the files do. Sort the panel by Size to analyze which folders take up much space on your SD card.

List of shortcut keys

The full experience of using the Ghost Commander file manager can be enjoyed on a device with physical keyboard. If you're a happy owner of such, the following shortcut keys will let you quickly achieve your file management tasks:

left, vol_down, Tab - toggle the current panel
right, vol_up - select the current item
( left/right arrows also do the same if that enabled in the preferences )
+,- - Select/unselect all the items
(, ) - Enter the location to navigate to, or manage the favorites * - Add the current location (folder) to the favorites
= - Make the other panel show the same location as the current one
" - Show the size of the selected files
/ - Search for files by name
1 - Brief help
2 - Rename file
4 - Editor
5 - Copy the selected items to the folder shown in the other panel
6 - Move as above
7 - Make a folder (directory)
8 - Delete selected
9 - Open the application preferences
0 - Exit the program
[A-z] - Quick file search

Quick Search

When you press an alpha key, the current position will be changed to the first file which name starts with the letter you pressed.
Continue typing to locate another file if there are several with similar names.
It is case sensitive (at least in the current version).
To cancel the file name input, just press any other key, or touch the screen.

Network access

FTP access
To access an FTP site, open the home: location and then click on the "FTP site".
In the opened form enter the site name, path and your credentials.

Or just open the address bar panel and type in the full URL of the desired FTP site, like:
ftp://[your_name:password@]ftp.site_address.com/path

If you don't provide the name and password, "anonymous" will be used.
If the site you're trying to access to does not allow an anonymous access, your real identities will be prompted in a dialog box.

Please be aware: although Ghost Commander does not use your credential except for establish the connection, or does not pass them anywhere except the site you're connecting to, they are passed to the FTP site unencrypted and theoretically can be sniffed by a third party. This is a common problem of the FTP protocol. I'm sorry, but FTPS supported. Please try to use the SFTP plugin instead to connect to a SFTP server.

Hint: if your FTP server located in the local network managed by MS Windows domain controllers and you have trouble to connect to the server providing just the machine name, try to add also your domain's suffix. For example, if your PC named "mypc" is located in a domain with full name "mydomain.com", specify the full qualified name as the address: "ftp://mypc.mydomain.com"

In the rare case you need to specify the port which is different from the standard (21), you can do that too:
ftp://ftp.site_address.com:1021/path
In this sample the 1021 is the port number.

If FTP connection behaves glitchy, try to leave it by navigating to a local folder, and then try to connect FTP again.

SMB access
SMB stands for Server Message Block (SMB), also known as Common Internet File System (CIFS). It's a protocol used in local networks, and also known as "Microsoft Windows Network". To make the Ghost Commander access to a server or desktop's shared folder using that network protocol you need to install an application called "SMB plugin for Ghost Commander". The plugin is closely linked to the main application, as soon as it installed, it's ready for make you be connected to your desktop PC or an office windows server.

Why the windows network feature has to be a plugin? Because it uses the JCIFS library which is pretty heavy by itself and the main application remains compact for all the users who do not need the access to windows network.

Settings

"Configure the Layout" Section
Side-by-side panels - When checked, the application shows both panels side-by-side in a split screen mode. When unchecked the application works in the overlapped mode. See "modes".
Two lines in a row - When checked, the file panel will always show the files date and size below the file's name.
Finger friendly - When this is checked, the application enlarges the user interface elements for easy manipulated by a finger or a sausage.
Warn on a root folder - when checked, the application will issue an alert each time you trying to visit a system (not sdcard) folder. If you have that alert dialog, click cancel to go safely to the /sdcard folder.
Show Toolbar - When checked, the application shows that buttons bar at the bottom of the screen. You could hide it if your device has a physical keyboard.
Choose which buttons to show - You can customize the toolbar, placing only those commands those you use must often.
Left/Right Panel(s) Settings:
Detailed in Side-by-side mode - Show size and date for files in the Side-by-side mode
Detailed in Overlapped mode - Show size and date for files in the Overlapped mode
Sorting - Select how to sort the items in the list (by name, size, or date)
Show hidden files - If not checked, files started with dot won't be shown

External Editor Setup
If you want to use some third party editor instead of the built-in one, you can do that in the advanced section of the settings by the two following ways:

Leave the "editor activity" field empty. Then each time you tap on the "4 Edit" button, the system will ask you about the desired editor application to be used to edit the file. Check the "Always use this application" checkbox if you decided to use some particular one.
Specifying the desired editor explicitly - provide the full class name of an editor activity (The package name is assumed to be the same as the class name prefix).

To use the built-in editor use the activity name "com.ghostsq.commander.Editor". This is the default value.

Here is a tip on how to obtain the activity name of an external editor: Say we have a text editor called "Paul Mach Text Edit" installed.
Open the "apps:" location and find that editor application. Go in, then open the "Activities" and copy the activity name (in this case it's "org.paulmach.textedit.pmTextEdit") to the clipboard.
Paste the full activity name to the Ghost Commander external edit activity name property.

Other available text editors and their activity class names:
"Jota": "jp.sblo.pandora.jota.Main"
"TED": "fr.xgouchet.texteditor.TextEditor"

Exiting the Application

Press the '0' key or the "0 Exit" toolbar button for normal exit or go to Menu->Application->Exit. The application process should be terminated completely.
If you press the system "Home" button or choose a previously running application, the process will remain in the memory. If there is enough RAM available, the operation system will leave the application in sleep mode, allowing it be to relaunched faster when you need it again.

If in that moment some file operation was in the progress, it will continue, notifying you about its progress in the system notification area.

The "root" mode

There's two different modes in Ghost Commander to browse the local files - the normal one (described above), and so called "root:" mode. You need the root: mode only to make some tweaks with the system if your phone is rooted. Everything else (such as open a file with some applications) has to be done from the normal mode. If you accidentally switched to the root: mode, and want go back to normal, open the address bar (long tap on
a panel title) and just remove the "root:" prefix from the path. Or, navigate to the home: screen and select the item "local files".

To access as root (su), enter the location like follows:
root:/data
(here "/data" - a path given for an example)

If you need to switch to the root: mode quite often, you could enable it on the home: screen and also enable the tool button which switches to the root: mode by a single tap.

How to tell you're currently in the root: mode?
When you in the root: mode, you see the root: prefix in the path URI, and the file's permission are shown (if there enough space, say in the landscape mode ).

The root: mode is basically useless if the "busybox" executable is not installed. It should be placed to a directory mentioned in the $PATH variable, and/or its location is specified in the advanced application settings ("Path to busybox").

In the root: mode you can do the following:

Remount the system partition
Change the file permissions (i.e. the "chmod" and "chown" commands) of a file (see below)
Execute your own command with the current selected file
View and edit the configuration files
Analyze the file statistics (by executing the "stat" and "df" commands)

Say, you need to delete some system applications. Do the following:

Navigate to the folder with applications using the "root:" mode, i.e. in the title bar should see the following:
"root:/system/app#ro".  Here the "#ro" is an indicator that the /system partition is currently mounted read-only.
Remount the system partition to "Read/Write" mode. To do so click on the "Remount /system" button on the toolbar. The current location suffix should change to "#rw".
Find the files you want to delete and tap the "Delete" button.
Remount the system partition back to "Read-Only" mode.

mount:

To get the full list the mounted devices, type "mount:" in the address bar.
Click on a mount record's row to remount the corresponding partition to \"rw\" or back to \"ro\".

chmod
To chmod a file (only one by a time in the current version, sorry), long touch it, and in the context menu choose "chmod".

The chmod dialog should appear:

Installing busybox

If you in a situation when you just have rooted your phone but don't have installed the busybox and you can't do that, because your device does not have the market application yet, here what you could do:

Download the busybox executable and then copy the busybox file to some place on the /sdcard
Start Ghost Commander and using it copy the busybox file to /data/data/com.ghostsq.commander folder
Switch to the root: mode and change the owners to root (0), and the rights to 755 to allow it be executed
Go to the advanced settings and change the busybox to /data/data/com.ghostsq.commander/busybox
Remount the /system as "rw"
Copy the busybox file to /system/xbin
Remount /system back to "ro"
In the settings, remove the busybox path, let only the name be there (since the /system/xbin should be in the path)