Re: File dialogs: Miscellaneous

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

"Michael T. Babcock" wrote:
> 1) Name your files more appropriately by using your file manager and a
> quick-view program on double-click.

Eeeek... Are you serious?
It sounds like you never actually used previewing of files (for example
in the Gimp) and realized how useful, and essential, it can be.

Take a digital camera - it obviously won't spit out file names with
descriptive namings, unless it has some AI, which I doubt any digital
cameras have today.

Should you have to open 100+ different pictures just to find the one
you're interested in?

Remember Jorg's suggestion. The preview pane should be an extension that
the app could easily add, not something that we necessarily have to care
about and specify to 100%. I guess this is how it works in Windows.

To clarify some things: Most sensible apps with preview capabilities
have a checkbox in their file dialog that says "Use preview", since the
loading of pictures affects performerance when browsing files. But if
that box is checked, the preview is automatically loaded and shown for
the most recently selected file.

I think that's the way how it should work, and I hope it clarifys some
of the mysteries with preview for those who live in great fear about
preview.

Btw, I think it was agreed that double-clicking on a file should mean
"use this as my file and close the dialog".


> 2) "Must" ... disagree.  Maybe in a context option or clicking on the image
> then on "Preview".

See the "Use preview" checkbox option. Is that satisfactory?


> 3) If the 'directory+file browsing' window were implemented as I suggested,
> as a plug-in architechture shared with the file manager, plugins for the
> file manager (like those shown by Eazel) would allow for a directory of
> images to be shown as a gallery, with zoom levels or mp3's to be listed with
> their id3 tags shown.  There is no reason not to display this meta-data as
> part of the 'listing' just because we old-school people are used to seeing
> 
> -rw-r--r--    1 mbabcock mbabcock      61k Jul 11 02:04 cpq-rh61.patch.txt

Yes, Nautilus capability of showing metadata in the file view is very
attractive. I don't know how that would affect performerance for a
simple file dialog though. Perhaps the default Zoom level for file
dialogs should be set to 50% or so, to improve speed (I assume everybody
here following discussion has tested the Nautilus preview release and
how files are shown).

I'm asking this question now, because it has to be asked some time:
Do the want to mimic Nautilus file view? I don't mean exactly letting
the file dialog being a complete Nautilus clone functionality-wise
(horror) but merely borrow it's file view and "Zoom" paradigm in the
file dialog.

Personally, I find it quite interesting, especially since it could be
quite useful if the GNOME default file dialog and the GNOME file manager
behaved the same way...


Christian



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Christian Rose
http://www.menthos.com                    	    menthos@menthos.com
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