Re: BonoboPreview initiative - png in a control

[Jens Finke <jens triq net>]

On 10 Dec 2001, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> hmm, sorry to disagree, but is it really right to use a thumbnail for
> previewing all kind of files? I mean, there are a lot of files whose
> preview would be a lot difficult to generate as a thumbnail.
>
> What would a program be supposed to do to generate that? Get a
> screenshot of itself and save it to a file? How would I generate a
> thumbnail of a, for instance, gnumeric spreadsheet?

Well, your point is to use a BonoboControl for displaying all this. Let's
assume you have a dir with 30 different files in it. I don't believe it's
very efficient to start multiple controls to create a preview for all the
different file types.

My idea is to define a standard way of storing such previews on the
filesystem level. If we provide some helper functions for managing these
an application can create a preview image together with the original file
during saving. Then write a bonobo control which reads the thumbnails from
the filesystem level.

At least the Gimp developers consider these mechanism too. And it's also
open for non-Bonobo applications.

Regards,

   Jens

-- 
"Wer die Freiheit aufgibt, um Sicherheit zu gewinnen, wird am Ende beides
verlieren." -- Benjamin Franklin