Output options

[figueroadavid]

The output uses the ASCII drawing characters to delineate the tree which is great for onscreen display. However, these don't copy/paste well into normal GUI applications. I'd love to see an option to output the tree using more "normal" characters that would display better. Ideally, I'm thinking characters from the "standard" Courier New font would be a good way. I would pipe it into the clipboard and paste it.

But thanks for the great module 🙂

[poshAJ]

Do you mean an option to replace the Unicode (i.e. ├ and └) with ASCII (i.e.|- and `-)? If that's the case, I could tackle the implementation, would need to decide on a parameter. I could see using -Style with options for Unicode or ASCII, I'm assuming we'd want fancy (Unicode) as the default. @santisq, thoughts?

[poshAJ]

Default "Fancy"

TestGroup001
├── TestGroup005
├── TestGroup006
│   └── TestComputer0000001$
└── TestGroup007 ↔ Circular Reference

Option 1 "Fancy Rounded"

TestGroup001
├── TestGroup005
├── TestGroup006
│   ╰── TestComputer0000001$
╰── TestGroup007 ↔ Circular Reference

Option 2 "Classic"

TestGroup001
|-- TestGroup005
|-- TestGroup006
|   +-- TestComputer0000001$
+-- TestGroup007 <> Circular Reference

Option 3 "Classic Rounded"

TestGroup001
|-- TestGroup005
|-- TestGroup006
|   `-- TestComputer0000001$
`-- TestGroup007 <> Circular Reference

[santisq]

@figueroadavid Can you share an example of how the characters look when pasted from clipboard? Really lazy to turn on a VM just to test 😅. I'd also like to know what GUI application are we talking about here, because even Notepad renders these characters just fine. Exporting to CSV / XLSX also works well.

@poshAJ I'm fine with this as long as there is a valid reason to implement it. I think the Option 2 is the one that looks better but I'll let you decide which you like best... To implement this, we should probably change const values used in https://github.com/santisq/PSADTree/blob/main/src/PSADTree/Extensions/TreeExtensions.cs and instead use static fields that are updated per cmdlet invocation with the corresponding characters... Only way I see to not lose on performance.

[poshAJ]

Could implement the style(s) as a pseudo enum class, that way we could give all 4 options and let the user pick.

[santisq]

Yep, I was thinking an [-OutputRendering <TreeStyleEnum>] or something along those lines. Then In BeginProcessing of the base cmdlet call TreeExtensions.SetOutputRendering(OutputRendering) and set the static fields is the simplest way to implement it. If you wanna give it a go, I'm fine with that but I'd expect also an update to the docs.

[figueroadavid]

I had tried it in Outlook - I piped the output to clip.exe and then pasted it into an email. The extended ASCII characters were showing up as question marks. I'll get a screenshot on Monday.

I like @poshAJ 's suggestion.. those look great.

Thanks!

David F.

[santisq]

Your issue is due to clip not due to those characters David. clip isn't equipped for this... use Set-Clipboard instead.

Different cmdlet but same characters:

[figueroadavid]

I tried it out this morning with Set-Clipboard and in someways it was better and in someways it was worse.
The Set-Clipboard only pasted out the list of distinguishedNames - the tree structure was lost as were the domain and objectclass columns.

With clip.exe it kept the basic structure, but the drawing characters were replaced with ? instead. I even pasted it into notepad++ and got the same results - clip kept the structure and lost the drawing characters while set-clipboard lost the structure and only pasted the list of dn's.

[santisq]

The Set-Clipboard only pasted out the list of distinguishedNames

Because Set-Clipboard takes string[] input from pipeline and the ToString() method on these objects resolves to their DistinguishedName... If you want to copy them as you see them on the console you need to use oss or Out-String before piping:

As aside, the ideal way of sharing the output is via CSV since the objects have much more properties than the ones you see in the standard formatting view.

[poshAJ]

With 1.3.0, we have styling options. 🎉

(Get-ADTreeStyle).OutputRendering = 'PlainText' # No ANSI
(Get-ADTreeStyle).RenderingStyle = 'Classic' # No Unicode