Re: Regarding Nautilus scripts

["Eugenia Loli-Queru" <eloli hotmail com>]

>   1) Nautilus Scripts vs. Mime Activation Plugins ("Addons")

Scripts are just scripts. They are neither robust nor extensible.
MIME Activation Plugins are ok, as long as you don't have to code "natilus
code". The API should be simple. From what I read here, you talk about
plugins like Seahorse and Medusa which are very much integrated to Nautilus
and developers need to know the Nautilus API or quite a great deal about how
the whole gnome universe works.
I am only talking about a very simple API where a developer can simply get a
list of the files/dir selected, do the job it  was created to do and only if
necessary, send back to Nautilus the output (e.g. in a File Selection
addon).

>   2) Top Level Menu vs. Submenus (like the Scripts Menu)

It is just fine with me to have 2-3 additional options in the top level menu
if, for example, you have selected the specific filetype. What if you have
selected a text file, 3 php files and 5 html files? What do you show then?
Gedit, Bluefish and Screem's plugins? All with 2-3 options in that context
menu? That would be bloat.
And what if what I want to do with them is just to zip them, or to change
their return character from DOS to Unix? What if I just want to grep over
them? What if I want to tell Nautilus to make a specific selection in the
listed 2000 files on my /usr/bin that have the name g?ed*e.so.*. How do I do
all that with the MIME activation method?

The MIME Activation is a good solution only when you have selected that
specific filetype and not when you have selected a whole deal of different
files/dirs. Because if you enable all these plugins for all the filetypes
currently selected on nautilus, at some point you will end up with a top
level menu with 20 options. This is just not good. And it does not cover all
cases anyway.

Think of the addons as applets. Not as applications... But as applets,
extending Nautilus' functionality. Much like applets are for gnome-panel.
You don't load fstab or a terminal just to mount the cdrom via the Mount
applet on gnome-panel. You don't load the gnome cd player to load the
gnome-panel CD player applet.

Also, I am not saying that FileRoller or other full application should not
be in that "extentions" menu. I am all for it as long it cleanly designed
for it. But the ability to run individual "applets" (I guessed you don't
like the word "addons") from within Nautilus is much more desired most of
the time, as they are faster, direct and specialized to do only that and not
load an app with 5 menu options and 8 toolbar icons where they have nothing
to do with the scope of the immediate action to take.

>   3) Why any of this matters anyway / what are your suggestions?

My suggestion is to keep parts of the MIME activation method that are useful
and through a simpler API that doesn't require Nautilus knowledge (as in the
seahorse/medusa cases), put them under a submenu called
"extenstions/addons/whatever you want" and either show them all, at all
times, or only show an addon if its MIME type was found in the currently
selected files/dirs. But most of the times, most of the addons will/should
show in the submenu for consistency reasons. You don't want options to
appear and dissappear, even if it makes sense for people who understand
MIME.

Gah... can't explain it better. :-(

Eugenia