Re: [Epiphany] Re: Re: Download Manager

[Peter Harvey <pah06 uow edu au>]

On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 02:03, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> Op Tue, 05 Aug 2003 13:28:39 +1000, schreef Peter Harvey:
> 
> > I don't see the need for Nautilus to handle point 2. The current Epiphany
> > download manager lists files that I am currently downloading, and files
> > that have been downloaded. Why not add a "Find" or "Open Folder" to such a
> > download manager, which opens Nautilus on the folder that contains the
> > file which was downloaded?
> 
> Look at it the other way around. Downloading a file is essentially no
> different from copying a file over the network. Nautilus has familiar
> feedback for this kind of action. Then why implement a separate progress
> window, nowhere near as capable as a real nautilus view?
> 

If you were to drag-and-drop a link to the a Nautilus window, I feel
that you would be right. But these are different cases:
1. downloading a file to one location,
2. having a virtual location which shows a non-virtual file (in addition
to the file being visible from it's non-virtual location).

> > manage the files? Change their icons? Rename them? Or do I just want to
> > find them?
> 
> I second Osma's reply. Of course I want to do stuff with the files I
> just downloaded. If it's a movie, for instance, I want to double click it
> so it opens in Totem. If it's a PDF downloaded from CiteSeer I will
> likely want to rename it. You can think up any examples you like.
> 
> See also the discussion under bug 117641.

The download manager already has an "Open" button. I normally give PDFs
from CiteSeer my preferred naming scheme when I download them (normally
CiteSeer's naming is pretty good anyway). But let's assume that a
Nautilus window is used instead, so that you can Rename files.

What does Cut do? If I Move the file, what actually gets moved? When I
use Delete, does that remove the file from the disk, or not? If I use
Duplicate, where is the file duplicated?

What I'm suggesting is that Nautilus has file *manager* functionality,
which is overkill for what is needed for listing recently downloaded
files. Unless of course you suggest that the virtual folder contains
essentially symbolic links to the recently downloaded files (so Cut,
Move, etc. have defined semantics), in which case Rename won't work the
way you expect anyway.

For some views (like start-here:///, applications:/// or
preferences:///) this seems to me that this is already a problem. At the
very least these have the excuse that (for most purposes) the contents
are really virtual or seen as symbolic links.

Also, on the Nautilus list there has been discussion of ensuring that a
single folder/directory is only ever opened in a single window (much
like the old MacOS system). I feel that having a real non-virtual file
visible from two different *folders* is going to be much worse.

Finally, the list of most recently downloaded files is equivalent in
some sense to the results of a search. Look at the "Search for Files"
dialog as an example of what I think a download manager should look like
(it even has an "Open Folder" option in the context menu). For Epiphany
I feel that a nice simple dialog like this (not the massive bloat which
is Nautilus's context menu) is what is needed.

-- 
Peter Harvey.
Mostly Quiet.