Re: Regarding Nautilus scripts

[Darryl Rees <rees netnam vn>]

Eugenia Loli-Queru wrote:

> > For example if you right click on an archive file in nautilus, it
> > will give you the options.
> >
> > - Add to archive
> > - Extract here
> > - Extract to a subfolder
> > - Extract to...
> >    
>
> It should have been only one option: Add to acrhive. And it should have only
> being under an /addon submenu, not in the toplevel one.
> The rest options should only take place when you actually double click the
> file, or at least only use the "Extract To..." and again, place it under the
> /addon submenu.
OK. I personally could not disagree with you more; that would make them 
far less accessible, and 'addon' is completely artificial - it's UI 
design based on implementation rather than by usage. But popular opinion 
or user-testing will decide that in the end. The two items you mention 
are the least useful to me, so it just goes to show that people's usage 
patterns vary (to add to an archive I would drag and drop, and I almost 
always want to extract to the current directory or a subfolder). 
Different strokes for different folks I guess :-)

> These 2 options (and not the uneeded 4) should have being in the submenu of
> addons, and all binary addons (or at least links/xml/whatever) should live
> in a specific directory (e.g. /opt/gnome/bin/nautilus-addons/) so we can
> easily move them around and deal with them.
>  
Yes, they do all live in a specific directory - 
/home/cvsgnome/lib/bonobo, since the api uses gnome's bonobo component 
architecture (which is perfrectly suited to building add-on components).

> Ok. So it means that most of what I need, is there with the MIME API. The
> problem now is that it is implemented in a wrong way, which creates bloat.
>  
In what way? How is implementing them as components bloat? I thought 
components were the state-of-the-art for _avoiding_ bloat. Can you be 
more specific?

> Another question is, does this MIME API allows information to get back to
> Nautilus? For example, if I create a "File Selector" addon, which via regex
> and other methods specify some file names, could this mime api send the
> results back to nautilus and tell it to only select the files that match my
> result from the File Selector addon? You see, the information should flow
> both ways. If the MIME API can do this, I think we are set. All it is then
> needed is more standardization to where addons should live and that they
> should not place themeselves in the top level menu, for bloat and
> consinstency issues.
>  
Medusa will allow you to find and select files in lots of cool ways, and 
*fast*.

> I never said I want scripts. I said I want addons. :-D
>  
Well, actually you did - as is evident by the title of this thread... 
but that's OK :-)

To be honest, I think everything you want is there or coming fast. OK, 
so they're not called 'addons', but the nautilus architecture is clean, 
componentized, and incredibly flexible. Moreover, over time nautilus 
gets faster, cleaner, and more usable. The menus are not currently 
exactly how you want them, but as I said that will come down to 
usability studies (whether formally or not). If you feel strongly enough 
about something you can file a bug, and it will live or die by natural 
selection.

> I would be really sad to see the only other DE that has a
> chance to become dominant in the Unix world to fail on the same grounds KDE
> fails, with time. I just like clean stuff as I already said before. :-)
>  
With you on our side we cannot fail. Mwa ha ha ha (evil megalomanic 
laugh ;-D)

[ Disclaimer. - actually we love our KDE friends. ]


Cheers,
Long.