Re: scripting

[John Sullivan <sullivan eazel com>]

My take on the situation is that there was some experimental code to handle
audio file types transparently, and some discussion of generalizing this
idea. I don't think anything is actually happening based on this currently,
though.

John

on 3/12/01 12:13 PM, Jonas De Vuyst at jonas devuyst advalvas be wrote:

> On 12 Mar 2001 11:38:48 -0800, John Sullivan wrote:
> 
>> on 3/11/01 9:00 AM, Jonas De Vuyst at jonas devuyst advalvas be wrote:
>> 
>>>> My question might be stupid, but what if this feature would
>>>> apear on the GUI. For exmaple : Imagine that your word
>>>> processor can't handle a format but you have a converter.
>>>> With the mouse you should redirect the "save as..." dialog's
>>>> output into the converter's input.
>>> 
>>> IIRC BeOS had a special API for converting file formats. I'm not
> sure
>>> but I vagely recall that there is being worked on that for Gnome...
> it
>>> could be my imagination though ;-). What I am (more or less ;) sure
> of
>>> is that someone is working getting "translators" into Nautilus.
>> 
>> For what it's worth, I am unaware of any such work in Nautilus. At
> least,
>> there's nothing like that there now, nobody at Eazel is working on it,
> and
>> I'm not even sure there's a request for it in bugzilla.eazel.com.
> 
> I've looked it up and found the answers in the nautilus-list archive
> from Februari 2001. My confusion seems to have gotten because I asked
> two similar questions back then (heck, it still isn't all obvious to
> me). I've pasted some excerpts below.
> 
> I'll submit a request to Bugzilla BTW.
> 
> Some excerpts that may clear things up (the first three happen to be the
> most relevant ones):
> 
> From jonas devuyst advalvas be Sat, 10 Feb 2001 14:01:09 +0100
> Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 14:01:09 +0100
> From: Jonas De Vuyst jonas devuyst advalvas be
> Subject: [Nautilus-list] A whole list of feauture requests and bugs
> 
> ...
> 
> - Transparant copying of audio tracks to the hard disk. When a user
> drags an
> audio track (yes, it should be possible to "mount" audio CDs) to the
> hard disk
> then a dialog should pop-up asking what format the song should be stored
> in,
> CDDB should also propose meta-data for MP3s, Ogg Vorbis, etc. This
> feauture
> request is related to the next one.
> 
> - Converting file types. I believe that it is possible in Windows using
> ZipMagic to rename a folder to folder.zip and have it convert to a ZIP
> file.
> It is also possible to access these ZIP files like normal folders using
> that
> same program, but this is something GnomeVFS already offers. Such a
> feature
> would be great IMHO, though you probably don't want to limit the
> functionality
> based on the extension.
> 
> ...
> 
> =====
> 
> From snickell stanford edu Sat, 10 Feb 2001 05:42:07 -0800
> Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 05:42:07 -0800
> From: Seth Nickell snickell stanford edu
> Subject: [Nautilus-list] A whole list of feauture requests and bugs
> 
> ...
> 
>> - Transparant copying of audio tracks to the hard disk. When a user
> drags an
>> audio track (yes, it should be possible to "mount" audio CDs) to the
> hard disk
>> then a dialog should pop-up asking what format the song should be
> stored in,
>> CDDB should also propose meta-data for MP3s, Ogg Vorbis, etc. This
> feauture
>> request is related to the next one.
> 
> I thought we did this...? At the very least it has been discussed.
> Gnome-VFS can read audio CDs at the very least, and I thought there was
> mention of Gene doing conversion stuff at one point, though I could be
> entirely mistaken.
> 
> ...
> 
> =====
> 
> 
> From gzr ix netcom com Sat, 10 Feb 2001 09:07:10 -0800
> Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 09:07:10 -0800
> From: Gene Z. Ragan gzr ix netcom com
> Subject: [Nautilus-list] A whole list of feauture requests and bugs
> 
> Jonas,
> 
> Thanks for the suggestions. I can give you some positive news on one of
> your
> suggested features.
> 
>> - Transparant copying of audio tracks to the hard disk. When a user
> drags
> an
>> audio track (yes, it should be possible to "mount" audio CDs) to the
> hard
> disk
>> then a dialog should pop-up asking what format the song should be
> stored
> in,
>> CDDB should also propose meta-data for MP3s, Ogg Vorbis, etc. This
> feauture
>> request is related to the next one.
> 
> There is a gnome-vfs cdda module and experimental support for mounting
> audio
> cds in Nautilus.  The feature is disabled right now as we try to archive
> our
> 1.0 shipping goal and are focussing on stability and performance issues.
> If
> you have some hacking skills, it is easy enough to turn these feature on
> and rebuild Nautilus.
> 
> We use CDDB to name the files and you can drag them from the CD to any
> other
> mounted volume.  Adding the conversion while copying feature is next on
> my
> list of things to do to the cdda module.
> 
> Gene
> 
> =====
> 
> From mjs eazel com 10 Feb 2001 15:24:21 -0800
> Date: 10 Feb 2001 15:24:21 -0800
> From: Maciej Stachowiak mjs eazel com
> Subject: [Nautilus-list] A whole list of feauture requests and bugs
> 
> ...
> 
>> - Converting file types. I believe that it is possible in Windows
> using
>> ZipMagic to rename a folder to folder.zip and have it convert to a ZIP
> file.
>> It is also possible to access these ZIP files like normal folders
> using that
>> same program, but this is something GnomeVFS already offers. Such a
> feature
>> would be great IMHO, though you probably don't want to limit the
> functionality
>> based on the extension.
> 
> This might be a good feature but I don't tink we want it to be based
> on renaming.
> 
> ...
> 
> =====
> 
> From jonas devuyst advalvas be Sun, 11 Feb 2001 00:57:59 +0100
> Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 00:57:59 +0100
> From: Jonas De Vuyst jonas devuyst advalvas be
> Subject: [Nautilus-list] A whole list of feauture requests and bugs
> 
> ...
> 
>>> - Converting file types. I believe that it is possible in Windows
> using
>>> ZipMagic to rename a folder to folder.zip and have it convert to a
> ZIP
>> file.
>>> It is also possible to access these ZIP files like normal folders
> using
>> that
>>> same program, but this is something GnomeVFS already offers. Such a
>> feature
>>> would be great IMHO, though you probably don't want to limit the
>> functionality
>>> based on the extension.
>> 
>> This might be a good feature but I don't tink we want it to be based
>> on renaming.
> 
> If the idea is to allow no extensions then you'll need to come up with a
> way
> to change MIME types. Perhaps in the properties windows you could allow
> people
> to edit it (not by using raw MIME types of course), if you were to do
> that
> then you could present two buttons, one for forcefully changing the MIME
> type
> and one for converting the file. Just a thought.
> 
> ...
>