Re: Killing views [Was: Dealing with files in Gnome]

[Ali Akcaagac <aliakc web de>]

On Wednesday 02 April 2003 10:50, Julien Olivier wrote:
> Then, because I would'nt like to see Nautilus UI crippled with
> non-file-management UI elements (like konqueror) and make it a very
> complicated app...

But that's the point!

Konqueror's UI elements are not crippled. Basically Konqueror is nothing else 
than just a Window frame and nothing else. Without KHTML embedded as KParts 
(?) it wouldn't even act as a Webbrowser. All those KParts thingies are what 
gives it the powers e.g. act as SQL query analyzer, Pop3 email browser, 
Filemanager, Webbrowser, Movieplayer, PDF viewer and so on.

You need to see it as some sort of Plugins System, whenever I write an 
application for KDE and have it support KParts, then I can use it inside 
Konqueror and any other app that supports it.

The problem with Nautilus is, that it want's to emulate such a system with the 
views. Some applications for GNOME do it the right way. They offer an 
standalone application for it and offer the Nautilus view as well but some 
things are simply Nautilus views only and can't be used in other apps.

I don't like to sound like someone who demotivate the efforts of the Nautilus 
people again but you should really decide NOW and not with ongoing versions 
of GNOME what you finally like to have with Nautilus, either some sort of 
Filemanager in the means of Konqueror simply managing files and make usage of 
plugins or some sort of OO based browser or you continue stuffing views 
inside Nautilus and have thousands of users contact you and ask how they can 
do simple tasks because of not knowing about the views itself.

Real live scenario:
-------------------
Nautilus-CD-Burner, it's from what I know only available as Nautilus view and 
not as standalone application. Say for someone using as Distribution and say 
for someone NEW to linux and GNOME (that's the people you are targeting at, 
don't forget this). These people usually search for a CD-Burning standalone 
application first. They don't find anything and now contact you. You reply 
enter 'burn://' in the Locationbar of Nautilus and then continue... All you 
see is an empty Field and you ask yourself 'what now?'. What I like to 
explain here is that the views are being abused as addons as Nautilus only, 
which makes it hard for people to realize that they are there.

I personally like (and I'm probably not the only one) the way how Konqueror 
works. It's more logical to me

- have the standalone application,
- have it embedd a KParts thingy into Konqueror,
- have Konqueror automatically process the browsed files,
- no need to switch views because the plugins gives Konq the powers to
  automatically handle these files correctly.

Hope you understand what I'm up to. The way Nautilus does the things right now 
doesn't make it very pleasing to use and the views somehow suggest that I 
only write something for Nautilus only but nothing the whole Desktop can 
benefit from. KParts I can use in all applications across KDE, Nautilus views 
only in Nautilus if I'm not entirely mistaken.

If I'm wrong with something then let me know.