Motif File Manager 

16 August 2002: Xplore 1.2a is available, featuring some minor bug fixes, new application incons and experimental support for KDE/GNOME drag-and-drop interoperability. See the ChangeLog for details. 15 August 2003: RPMs for major Linux distributions are now available. Check the Download section below.

Download. Screenshots: Linux Solaris Gallery
Brief reviews of xplore can be found on linux.com [broken link?] and Chuck's Linux file manager page.

Xplore is a powerful and highly configurable Motif file manager with an Explorer-like user interface. Author: Albert Gräf (ag@muwiinfa.geschichte.uni-mainz.de). License: GPL V2 . Requires Motif 2.x. (For open source systems like Linux and FreeBSD there now is Open Motif which is available free of charge. You can also get Open Motif from ICS, IST and MetroLink, and it is now included in RedHat, SuSE and probably most other recent Linux distributions. Please note that last time I checked the LessTif libraries were still not sufficient to run xplore, since some of the required Motif 2.x widgets were only partially implemented.)

Highlights:

• customizable four-pane layout, which includes a directory tree view, file view with different display styles, the "shelf," a kind of clipboard inspired by the NeXT file manager, and a "log" pane which captures the output of launched programs
• files can be moved, copied, executed etc. with simple mouse operations, including drag and drop between different xplore windows
• full keyboard navigation support, including an incremental filename search facility
• builtin automounting facility for special file systems like floppies, cdroms, etc.
• comprehensive session management features, with full support for the X11R5 and R6 session management protocols
• includes man page and many XPM icons
• offers extensive configuration options. In particular, file types are fully configurable, including separate push and drop actions a la xfm, and type-specific popup menus. A free-format configuration language featuring C preprocessor commands allows you to set up rather complex configurations with moderate effort, and a configuration dialog allows you to quickly add new and change existing file types at runtime.

• README, INSTALL and ChangeLog files
• the FAQ (frequently asked questions, still rather preliminary)
• manual page in HTML format
• system.xplorerc and magic, the standard configuration files

The present release has been tested on FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris, but should compile - with minor tweaking - on most POSIXish systems with recent X11 and Motif 2.x libraries and working imake. The sources include Gregory M. Messner's Xg widget set from which xplore uses the tabs widget. You can find the original xg sources here. Binary packages for FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris x86 are also available. See the INSTALL file for installation instructions.

Many thanks to all xplore users who helped to improve the current release. Please continue to send bug reports, patches, comments, etc. to: ag@muwiinfa.geschichte.uni-mainz.de. Also, please contact me if you can contribute binaries for other systems, I'd like to make these available on this page.