I had just thought of something, and maybe you’ll hear me out:
Whenever I look at a BIG directory full of LONG filenames with repeated, characters at the beginning of the FileName fore and after the end. See this example:
PurchaseOrder Component gear UpaidUnsaved.xyz
PurchaseOrder Component cog UpaidUnsaved.xyz
PurchaseOrder Component frame UpaidUnsaved.xyz
PurchaseOrder Component engine UpaidUnsaved.xyz
PurchaseOrder Component MASTER Sheet UneditedUnsaved.xyz
If your FINDER column width isn’t that wide, Finder will show your file list as so:
PurchaseOrder…itUnsaved.xyz
PurchaseOrder…itUnsaved.xyz
PurchaseOrder…itUnsaved.xyz
PurchaseOrder…itUnsaved.xyz
PurchaseOrder…editedUnsaved.xyz
Currently that’s the way APPLE FINDER does it; it chops the file-name in HALF then drops off characters from the middle outwards. That works most of the time, but there are not more and more identifiable characters in the middle of the FileName string.
which is hardly helpful. Actually it’s useless because you can’t tell what file is what anymore! Even worse, the last one cuts out “Un out of Unedited” and makes you think it’s is edited.
Wouldn’t it be better, if when reducing the width of the window, it could some how detect the repeated characters included the truncations commonly used in the computer world such as the use of non-aplhas, CamelCase, symbolic-identifiers, [banners], etc. and EMPHASISED the identifying characteristics of the filenames as follows, or maybe dropping off vowels… some algorithm to make it still human readable?
Pur_Ord_Com_gear_Upa_ved.xyz
Pur_Ord_Com_cog_Upa_ved.xyz
Pur_Ord_Com_frame_Upa_ved.xyz
Pur_Ord_Com_engine_Upa_ved.xyz
Pur_Ord_Com_MASTER_Unsaved.xyz
This way, I can easily tell which file is about GEARS, COG, FRAME, ENGINE and the most important one I don’t want to mix up and accidentally move or delete is MASTER SHEET which also so happens to be un-saved (which of course doesn’t make sense, but it’s all there for drama 
)
Perhaps it’s not possible under the current architecture of Finder and how TotalFinder can access these parts of the OS X, but I hope someone can figure it out or at least advise APPLE it’s an idea that many people could save time and reduce the occurrence of headache!
This way of truncating could be used where there are multiple instances of the files whose filenames are nearly identical, and not applied to the others. That’d be fantastic, wouldn’t it!?
Cheers,
Howard
Down-Under