Re: the Nautilus context menu

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 05:37:07AM -0500, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> The new nautilus has a feature where external plugins can insert menu 
> items in the context menu for files. This is quite powerful and lets us 
> extend Nautilus with new functionality from other apps (e.g. file-roller 
> can add a "create an archive from selected files"). 
> 
> However, it is also very easy to misuse this functionality to add stuff to 
> the menu entry that may not be suited. The context menu is a limited 
> resouce, and its already quite long. Several people disagreed with adding 
> context menu components, arguing that the menu was already to long. 
<snip>

The menu could be made shorter.

1) Dependent on Bug #82162, Open and Open With can be one item.

   Even without that, Open can be removed and instead the first
   item on the Open With menu can be the default item.
   This would not be bad because:
   a) Open is already afforded by (double-)clicking the icon.
   b) There'd be a way to know what is the default opener.

2) Scripts can probably be removed in favor of limited menu editing.

3) Cut/Copy/Paste and Duplicate/Make Link can be replaced by two item.
   The replacements would be Pick Up and Drop, with a submenu for Drop
   allowing a choice of what to drop including: the object itself,
   a copy of the object, a link to the object. Again dependent on
   Bug #82162, one of those items can be made the default so that
   the user need not open the submenu.

4) Rename used to be afforded by clicking on the label. What happend to
   this? Bring this back and get rid of the Rename... menu item. There
   is already another menu item that allows renaming - Properties.

5) All of the icon items can be removed to the properties.


The menus, without #82162 fixed, would be:
+------------------+
| Open With       >| -------------- +---------------+
+------------------+                | <the default> |
| Pick Up          |                +---------------+
| Drop            >| - +--------+   | <other        |
+------------------+   | Here   |   |   openers>    |
| Move to Trash    |   | Copy   |   |               |
| Delete           |   | Link   |   +---------------+
+------------------+   +--------+
| Properties       |   | Cancel |
+------------------+   +--------+

With #82162 fixed:
1) s/Open With/Open/
2) The Open item could be activated without showing the submenu.
3) <the default> would not need to be moved to the top as it
   would be indicated by a some icon next to it.
4) Drop could be activated without showing the submenu.
   (I don't know which drop should be the default.)


Cheers,
Greg Merchan