Re: network://

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Fri, 2003-09-12 at 00:14, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> Hi
> 
> We are planning, in gnome-network, to do some Zeroconf (aka RendezVous)
> support. One of the things we are thinking is to have some special
> folders in network:// that allow the user to view the autodetected
> services for different protocols.
> 
> This means, we need to have things like:
> 
> 	network://WWW
> 	network://FTP
> 	...
> 
> which would display a list of links to the discovered servers for every
> service. This is similar to XD2's 'Network neighborhood' icon in
> network://.
> 
> So, how can we do that?
> 
> Also, the network:// stuff seems to be incomplete (with even disabled
> code in Nautilus about it). So, what are the plans on that?

The whole network:// thing is a vfolder, with all the brokenness of the
vfolder backend. I really don't like the way its currently done, so I
try to minimize exposeage of it. We have to sit down and figure out a
comprehensive strategy to mountpoints, removable media, things like
non-usb-storage digital cameras and network filesystem resources. 

We need solid answers to things like: How do we detect hardware
supported by gnome-vfs plugins? How do we make things like the ftp/dav
backends usable (we don't want users to have to type in urls)? What ends
up on the desktop? in the multiroot tree? and in some sort of "My
Computer" style location?

So far this sort of user interface integration in Nautilus just hasn't
been done. We do support a whole lot of things, but they just are not
exposed in a way that a) make sense as a whole and b) is visible to a
non-hacker.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a suicidal day-dreaming astronaut from the Mississippi delta. She's a 
transdimensional mute safe cracker with her own daytime radio talk show. They 
fight crime!