Cross-platform way of getting list of all drives (A - Z) on a computer?

[paul_nicholls]

Hm, I not sure if I understood correctly. You want the User first select the drive and then the file, right? But what about the ordinary TopenDialog? One can select all drives from within ... and this works on all OSs. But maybe I got something wrong ...

Attachment 503

Thanks Cybermonkey, but if I use the standard TOpenDialog, I need to close that dialog before I can let the user play a selected sound file...

If I use a custom one, I can let the user play a selected sound and then if they are happy, close the dialog box, returning the file name

cheers,
Paul

[pstudio]

Then how about extending TOpenDialog to have a preview function?

[paul_nicholls]

hmm...interesting idea, thanks!

I wonder how easy it would be to do under Lazarus? I am more familiar with Delphi controls

cheers,
Paul

[Ingemar]

I can think of a few ways to handle it.

- Specify drives with a string. Under Windows, it will be a single letter string. Under Unix, it will be the name of the volume. (Although Unix hides volumes, it is really just a directory in /Volumes etc.)
- Index all volumes into an array, and index it using the drive letter. (Makes everything look more like Windows to you.)

Of course, you must also handle path formats, using "\" or "/" and making it start right. There are quite a few things to handle, and making that transparent is a challenge.

When I made a Windows port of an application (from Mac) I created full path strings in the file dialogs, and used that. As long as I didn't mess with the string contents, this was transparent. It is convenient to use a separate string for the file name without the path though. Also, on the Mac it isn't recommended to use path name strings, because the OS will handle files moved while in use (very elegant) but it can't change your own strings.

[paul_nicholls]

Thanks for the tips Ingemar

cheers,
Paul