Sort columns by label and a new "Last seen complete" column

[fileninja]

Feature 1:

I would like uTorrent to remember which column is sorted based on the view/label (Downloading/Completed/Active/Inactive). I find myself constantly switching sort orders as I look at the different views.

When I'm in the Downloading view, I want it to be sorted by download order, or the # column.

When i'm in the Completed view, I want it to be sorted by the completed date

When i'm in the Active view, i want to columns sorted by Status

etc..

If i'm in the Download view, sorted by #, and move to the Completed view, the data is disorganized and needs to be resorted.

It would even be ok for this data not to be saved, so long as it's remembered during the current session.

Feature 2:

New column type: "Last seen complete". This is a column that existed in eDonkey which would tell you the last Date/Time that uTorrent saw the the file with an avail > 1. This would allow you to determine if a file with a current avail < 1 was ever complete. This is useful when downloading older torrents, you can know which files will eventually complete or not.

Thanks

[yourstranger]

The "last seen complete" or "last seeded" feature seems to be ignored whenever it's suggested. There's a few requests for it, sometimes people get it confused with the Inactive field, where it says how long ago you received data from a potentially partially shared file, which isn't the same as when the network last saw a fully downloadable copy of the file (seed or distributed copy). I had a quick look through the forum and one person asked for this feature back in 2008 so I guess it's just not going to happen. It would have given me an idea of whether to give up on a huge torrent I have going or not.

Shame.

[Firon]

There is a "Last active" column.

[yourstranger]

Hi Firon

Firstly, thanks for replying to this. I know there's a Last Active column but it doesn't serve the purpose of a "Last Seen Complete" column. You see, the torrent I'm watching says it's still active on quite a lot of connections/peers, but none of those are seeds and there is not a complete distributed copy of the file amongst them all, so no matter how long I wait, I don't think it'll ever complete. The most it has completed on mine and other peers is 91.9%. That's why if there was a Last Seen Complete column, I could at least see if there was a full copy of the file available at any point. If there was, even briefly a day ago or something like that, then I'd know that if I kept the torrent going, there would be a chance I'd be able to finish the torrent because I'd know somewhere there is the last few bits that I require. Without it, I don't really know if there's ever any chance of it completing or not.

It would be a very useful feature to have in this respect. Do you think it will ever happen or will people just be referred back to the Last Active column, which is of no real use in these situations?

[Firon]

I don't think last active updates unless there's some actual downloading going on while in the downloading state.

When seeding, it only updates the last time you actually uploaded a chunk to someone.

[yourstranger]

Firon

The Last Active column is not as useful as a Last Seen Complete date, nor can it be used to display similar information. The peers connected to me all report as being inactive in the Last Active column for days because nobody has the rest of the data. All I and my other peers can upload to others is what we now have ourselves, 91.9% of the total data.

I'm not sure how I can explain it any other way for you.

Forget everything I've put in the past couple of messages. Forget the Last Active column. I try to download a torrent. It downloads to, say, 99% and stops, no seeds available, and everyone else already has the exact same 99% completed. Everyone using this torrent needs that exact final 1% to complete - the same data is needed by us all, we all have the exact same data as each other. The General tab says the Availability is 99% - so this means nobody online at the moment has the full thing so none of us are going to be able to get any more data. Fair enough. We wait for a couple of hours and check again, the Last Active tab says the no activity for the last couple of hours because we're all waiting for the remainder of the data and we're all waiting for the same bits and aren't interested in what each other has because it's exactly the same as what we already have. We go away and wait some more and then either a seed comes along, OR a peer with 55% comes online - and this peer luckily has the exact data everyone else is looking for, our final 1%. Availability goes up in the General tab to reflect that a distributed copy of the file now exists. He sticks around for a few minutes and then disconnects. I didn't get to finish my download, nor did anyone else. Availabilty goes back down as the distributed copy no longer exists.

Now, if I wasn't sat at the machine watching all this occur, I wouldn't necessarily know there was this magical computer somewhere that connected and that had exactly what I needed. I would if uTorrent made a note of the fact it was Last Seen Complete when the seed or the peer with the exact data that me and everyone else were waiting for came online. If had this, in this scenario, we would know that someone out there DOES have what we want and it would be worth keeping the torrent going because the someone may connect again and we may be able to grab what we need.

Do you understand? Forget the Last Active column.

[yourstranger]

And thus this thread, and another request for the feature surely dies.

I think I see now why a Last Seen Complete function is never implemented. Either the people concerned truly can't understand the multiple explanations of the concept offered to them over the years, or they're so proud of the Last Active column that they're blinded into thinking it's more useful than it is and think it can offer similar info.

[Firon]

I'm not talking about Last Active in the peers tab. I'm talking about Last Active in the MAIN listview.

[yourstranger]

OK. I've found that little option buried away and I've enabled Last Active in the main view and it's now saying 13 hours 47 mins. Are you saying this was the last time Availability (either seeds or peers) was 1 or greater? Or are we going round in a circle here, and you're pointing out another feature that's not particularly useful.

To quote Smoovious from a different thread;

"When downloading, it is true that it won't tell you about seeing a 1.000 availability, but it was never intended for that. It only counts active traffic you're involved with."

But that's the point. If it wasn't intended to show us when Availability was last 1 or more, then please consider implementing that very thing so that is does. It's been requested numerous times and people just say, "There's a Last Active column" like it's an answer. So? There's a Show Statistics and a Check For Updates option, but they're irrelevant too.

Please implement a Last Seen Complete feature.

[yourstranger]

Me again.

So..

Despite the requests for this feature, it still doesn't appear to have been implemented. Interesting. Perhaps the next update will contain an MP3 player in it's place.

Does anyone know why this hasn't been implemented? Is it too hard to do for the programmers of uTorrent? It's available in certain other programs. What's the delay?

Will we ever see it? I'm curious. If anyone can offer advice, please do. Perhaps I'm missing something.

[Firon]

Last active is the last time you were able to successfully download a complete piece. There's no need to implement this.

[yourstranger]

You said "able to successfully download a complete piece", but it's not the same thing as "able to see when the entire torrent was last available".

What if you don't want to know when you last received some data?

What if you're waiting for the last few percent of a torrent, along with some other people, and for several days your precious last active stat has reported no data being downloaded?

What if you want to know when the whole torrent was last seen available? What if you want to be able to judge the likelihood of a seed, or enough leechers to provide an availability of 1 will occur? The ability to show when the availability of the torrent was >=1 would allows us to make the decision as to whether it's likely the full torrent will be seen again. If there's a number of peers that all have the same percentage downloaded and everyone is waiting, it would be useful to be able to see when a full torrent was last seen.

I refuse to believe you can't see the difference between the two stats, I've explained it so very thoroughly that a child chould understand it. Smoovious from another thread, whom I have quoted, understands that it doesn't track >=1 availability so you should be able to. And that's my point, people request the feature to be able to track >=1 availability and you say there's a last active stat which is something entirely different and far less useful.

I must come to the conclusion that it's just too tricky to code. It would either mean the tracker itself had to monitor the availability of the torrent, or each uTorrent client would have to keep track, and every five minutes or so, update the other clients that it's aware of.

Maybe that's just too difficult and we'll end up with a built-in MP3 player instead.

EDIT: Incidentally, I fully expect you to ignore everything in this post and just copy and paste the phrase, "ALR34DY HAZ LAST ACTIV3!!!".