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

[Julien Olivier <julo altern org>]

Le mer 02/04/2003 à 15:05, Ali Akcaagac a écrit :
> On Wednesday 02 April 2003 14:27, Julien Olivier wrote:
> > Yes, I know that. But that's only theory. In practice, konqueror IS
> > crippled. For example, it has a location bar, previous/next icons which
> > come from the fact that it may be a web navigator. It has a "print" icon
> > which is useless when browsing your files etc...
> 
> How I see it:
> 
> I think that the Locationbar, Previous/Next and Print are indeed important 
> features for a Filemanager.
> 
> - Locationbar to quickly enter where you want to dive e.g. cut&paste a 
> location from a textfile or from somewhere else or for fast entering the 
> location you want to go. Or if you dive into some directory then you get 
> phoned up and come back, then you don't know where you are. For me a 
> Locationbar is really important and necessary to know where I am.
> 
> Example: /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/local/bin /usr/local/sbin 
> /usr/X11R6/bin /usr/libexec /usr/local/libexec /opt/<whatever>/ ...
> 
> They all sound similar and are valid locations for binary files. I like to 
> know where I am and not GUESS where I am. I hope that Nautilus is not the 
> first Filemanager that you have met in your life because every Filemanager 
> that I know of and have used on my personal own offered features like this in 
> the one or other way.
> 

I don't agree: The location could be displayed in the title bar. The
only real interest in having a location bar is to go somewhere quickly
by writing/pasting its location. But in this case, there should be (and
there is) a menu entry to open a location dialog.

> - Previous/Next is indeed important specially in cooperation with the 
> Locationbar. Say I enter ftp://ftp.gnu.org/ and then later Localhost:// or 
> something like this browsing on my own System looking if I have a new file or 
> not then it's easier to press Previous or search for a Dropdownbox in the 
> Locationbar to quickly select or go back to ftp.gnu.org rather than 
> re-entering it.
> 

I think UP is enough to browse your file system because for each
protocol (ftp://, smb://, file://...) there should be an easy and quick
way to enter them. For example, you should have a "home" icon in your
sidebar leading to file://home/you/, a "network" leading to a smb://,
nfs:// browser etc... and you should use your bookmark manager to go to
ftp:// sites. This way, you would always have an easy and fast way to go
from ftp:// to file:// etc...

> - Print is necessary if you want a list with files printed out e.g. Filesizes, 
> Dates, Attributes etc.
> 

Well, is it something that really needs to go on the main toolbar ? I
really don't think lots of people will print the list of their files...

> > Of course, that's just my personal opinion and I also feel that Nautilus
> > has herited some UI crippling from the time where it was a web
> > browser...
> 
> Well from what I know Nautilus was meant to be a Desktop Shell. It still does 
> more than a simple Filemanager imo but that is also personal taste. I don't 
> see any UI crippling in Nautilus but I still see that it needs a lot of 
> polish, enchancements and fixups.
> 

Yes, it was conceived to be a desktop shell but I think its philosophy
changed recently (for example, web browsing is now disabled by default)
and that's why we now have a quite hybrid app.

> > Now if you say that GNOME needs a plugin-embedder comparable to
> > konqueror, why not but then I need a file manager that does what its
> > name claims: manage files.
> 
> Well Konqueror is no plugin-embedder - it uses Plugins offered by other 
> applications e.g. If I write an eDonkey plugin for KDE then I can use it in 
> ANY applications including Konqueror that gives it the powers. Plugins should 
> be used globally on the system e.g. shared with other applications. That's 
> what besides others Bonobo was meant for but somehow never came seriously 
> into action. Nautilus views as the name implies are Bonobo implementions into 
> Nautilus only and can't be used over the whole System
> 

Of course I know that kparts can be used on the whole system but when I
say that knoqueror is a plugin-embedder, I mean it's ONLY a
plugin-embedder. So it's not that you CAN embed plugins in konquerors,
in fact you MUST embed plugins in konqueror. Else, it's just an empty
frame.

If Nautilus views can't be embedded in other GNOME apps, then I agree
that it sucks big time and should be fixed.

> Try this http://www.nongnu.org/gcmd/ maybe you gonna like it.
> 

Thanks for the link ! It looks great.

> > I just don't like hybrid apps because their ployvalence is often
> > compensated by bad UI design.
> 
> Why ? Nautilus does the same, whenever I start the GThumb view inside it then 
> it adds required elements into the Toolbar, the same should be possible with 
> other applications. Think Konqueror as two different applications a 
> filemanager and a webbrowser, two different icons on your panel to start it. 
> You don't realize it to be only one application. In the case for Nautilus we 
> should do the same due to the Views and GNOME-VFS it's more, a network 
> browser, ftp browser, application browser, preferences browser and so on. But 
> it would be cool if it was done 'more correctly' in a global way. Say I write 
> an eDonkey application for GNOME then it makes usage of e2dk:// whenever I 
> click on such a link in the browser or whenever I write a sql:// application 
> that It gonna start some sort of query analyzer.
> 
> And I like to tell you my very personal opinion here too, I very much prefer 
> to how Konqueror works than how Nautilus works, integrates and operates and I 
> would really appreciate if people start to FINALLY decide what Nautilus and 
> other components on GNOME should be meant to be, as long as things are not 
> really decided as long people can't start developing, fixing, implementing, 
> reaching these decided targets. I like to add one final sentence here. I do 
> respect the people working on Nautilus and I very much appreciate their work 
> on it and of course Nautilus is being worked on but if we view it from the 
> process 2.0 release towards 2.2.1 then nothing special had happened. For me 
> Nautilus 2.2.1 is as exciting to use as 2.0 and I rarely errr. never use it.
> 
> 

Well, you resumed the problem. You want a konqueror-like app and I want
a gmc/gnome-commander-like app. We are both right but Nautilus just
can't fit well for any of us because Nautilus developers seem to be a
mix between you and me (well, that's how things sound at least).

But, anyway, I wouldn't care if Nautilus was able to embed a lot of
plugins/parts/bonobo/views/whatever as long as it CAN be used as a
simplefile manager and doesn't open text files in an internal view by
default :)

Anyway, I also think that the more efficient way to get things done the
way YOU want them is to actually do them yourself. As I don't have time
to help Nautilus development, I just say what I'd like to see but don't
complain.