Re: taking features away (compact view removed from Nautilus)

["Jasper St. Pierre" <jstpierre mecheye net>]

It seems like the broken "labels beside icons" behavior should be
treated as a bug in GtkIconView that should just be fixed.

On Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Adam Dingle <adam yorba org> wrote:
> I realized recently to my surprise and dismay that the compact view has been
> removed from Nautilus:
>
> http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=241e462024070d9f79f4816256fc00ff5119e25f
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676842
>
> When I switched to GNOME back in 2006, Nautilus had only the icon and list
> views.  At that time I felt that was a serious limitation of the GNOME
> desktop, since neither of these views made it easy to browse directories
> with lots of files in a readable way.  I really wanted a view where I could
> reasonably see lots of files at once, with filenames stacked vertically (so
> I wouldn't have to scan my eyes in two dimensions in order to find a
> filename I wanted) and where the filenames wouldn't wrap.
>
> I spent a couple of weekends back then hacking on a compact view for
> Nautilus, but never found the time to quite make it work, so I rejoiced when
> Christian Neumair implemented a compact view in March 2008:
>
> http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/commit/?id=b19cc7674bf16a89447de2fe9b112d5a352d233e
>
> Compare two views of the same folder zoomed to the same level of visual file
> density, one with text beside icons, the other in compact view.  Which would
> you rather scan when looking for a file?
>
> text beside icons: http://yorba.org/download/scratch/nautilus_icon_view.png
> compact view: http://yorba.org/download/scratch/nautilus_compact_view.png
>
> For the last 6 years, every time I've set up a GNOME machine (certainly many
> dozens of times) I've set it to use compact view by default.  I've often
> thought this should be the default for everyone.
>
> So now all I can say is this: Where was this change discussed, other than
> the above Bugzilla ticket which a tiny number of people saw?  When were we
> given the opportunity to comment on this change?  Why, why, why?
>
> I'd like to end on a constructive note.  I propose that GNOME adopt the
> following policy.  No major feature will be removed from a core GNOME
> application before a discussion has occurred on a public mailing list such
> as this one (or on a Bugzilla bug, with a prominent mailing list
> announcement pointing to the bug in question).  I also propose that all such
> feature removals that have occurred in the 3.6 development cycle be reverted
> until such discussion has occured .
>
> The features in core GNOME apps are the result of years of hard work and
> consensus building by our community.  All I ask is to be informed before
> these features vanish and to be given the chance to say why I like them so
> much.
>
> adam
>
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-- 
  Jasper