No file selection detected, but only in certain folders

[gilch]

For example, in my documents folder and the .enso/ folder. But my pictures folder works. I like to use the "learn as open" on certain files/folders in there. I can manually create shortcuts in File Explorer and drop them in the .enso/commands/learned/ folder for the same effect, but this can get tedious if I'm making a lot of changes.

I can reproduce even when running the debug.bat with an admin terminal. No difference in the debug log as far as I can tell. It does say Clipboard contains CF_CLIPBOARD_VIEWER_IGNORE., but it does that whether it can find the file selection or not.

I'm using the latest release (version 1.1). This is on Windows 11 Home 23H2. Is this a known issue in Enso? Do I need to grant some security permission beyond an admin terminal?

[GChristensen]

Hi,

As I understand, some files from "My Documents" could not be added as commands using "learn as open". There is no difference when running Enso with admin and regular terminal. Did I understood correctly? Most likely it is some permission issue. Please give your user full control on the files and try again.

[gilch]

I opened the File Explorer properties dialog on both an affected and unaffected file. The ownership and permissions were identical, so I don't think that's it.

I made a simple custom command for faster testing. It seems to show the same issue as "learn as open":

def cmd_what(ensoapi):
    """Displays the current selection dict"""
    ensoapi.display_message(ensoapi.get_selection())

Affected files show {}—an empty dict. This will also show multiple file selections, up to the display length limit of Enso's message window. Sometimes a file that can't be detected individually will show up in a group. That's weird.

[gilch]

I have yet to find a folder that doesn't work. It's always files. It seems like the difference is that file types with a preview in the File Explorer preview pane fail. Could the preview be locking out Enso somehow? Except photos have always worked so far, and they do have a preview, so that doesn't make sense either.

[gilch]

The same group may work or fail depending on what order I select the files. If a previewable file is last, Enso can't detect the group. That's exactly what decides which preview is shown. I'll try copying a picture file to Documents to see how it groups.

[gilch]

Yeah, I tried grouping with a .jpg file. It works like a file without a preview, despite showing one. Either individually, or as the last item of a group, Enso can see it. I'm not sure how Enso decides to order the returned tuple of paths, but it doesn't seem to be the selection order.

[gilch]

If I turn off the File Explorer preview pane or use the details pane instead, everything seems to work. That's an easy enough workaround, I suppose, but something is wrong with how Enso is handling the situation.

[gilch]

So my "certain folders" assumption in the title was wrong. It's just that certain folders tended to have different file types. Some previewable in File Explorer, some not.

[GChristensen]

So, this turns out to be the problem of Windows Shell. Personally I never use file preview, so this error went unnoticed, Enso probably can do anything about this, because it uses Windows API to obtain explorer selection.