Re: Spring Loaded Folders Reloaded
- From: Darryl Rees <rees netnam vn>
- To: sinzui cox net
- Cc: Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>, Christophe Fergeau <teuf users sourceforge net>, iain <iain prettypeople org>, desktop-devel-list <desktop-devel-list gnome org>, Nautilus-list <nautilus-list gnome org>
- Subject: Re: Spring Loaded Folders Reloaded
- Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 11:35:36 +0700
Curtis Hovey wrote:
On Fri, 2003-02-28 at 12:43, Alexander Larsson wrote:
On 28 Feb 2003, Christophe Fergeau wrote:
However, looking at the Apple latest patent [1], it is clear that the
patch would make Nautilus violates claim 1 of that patent.
To my eyes, the more sensible thing to do with respect to patent is to
never read any so that you can say you didn't know about it if there is
some problems :)
Moreover, this apple patent is probably valid in a few countries, and I
don't think it's really fair to reject this patch because it's illegal
in the us (and maybe a few other countries). You can #ifdef it out in
the problematic countries if you want to be safe :)
That would mean you can't distribute nautilus.
From the GPL:
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute
so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and
any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not
distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not
permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive
copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could
satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from
distribution of the Program.
Thanks. I wish I had remembered to check the license when I first
mentioned the patented issue and distribution complications. I knew
there were real legal complications and I stopped after reviewing the
list archives.
I hope all is not lost. I think this feature is valuable, and I we can
improve it (innovate it) so that there are no patent issues. The
behaviour, restated in hopes of seeing an alternate implementation, is
that a gesture involving a selection of objects in nautilus will display
something that will help navigate the folder hierarchy using only
gestures. I believe someone suggested displaying the tree instead of
opening folders. And now that I think of it, Spring Loaded Folders are
never easy to navigate up the tree. While hovering over a folder seams
natural to me (wanting to move, but hesitating) as a means to display a
helper, I'm not sure that is intuitive when you want the files to go
outside any desktop folders.
Another alternative idea. Press a particular hotkey at any time (not
necessarily while dragging and dropping) while hovering over a folder to
create a temporary window with the contents of the folder. You could
also use this to open a file down a deep heirarchy without moving the
nautilus 'current directory'...
This would be unrelated to dragging and dropping (although usable in
that case, of course), and so close to zillions of other old ui
techniques there couldn't possibly be a patent on it :-)
Just an idea.
Darryl.
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