Re: GEP 7 - icons and thumbnails

[Dave Malcolm <david davemalcolm demon co uk>]

On Thursday 19 September 2002 14:12, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> I have put gep nr 7 in the gep cvs module. It concerns moving the new
> nautilus icon + thumbnailing code to a common library.
>
> Discussions about this gep should take place on
> gnome-libs-devel gnome org, and in fact the discussion was already taking
> place like normal before I wrote this silly gep.

Some thoughts:
(i) Emblems:  If icons are going be consistent between the file manager and 
e.g. the file selector, recent doc lists, etc should icons also embed any 
emblems, or is this a separate system?.  Though this touches on issues like 
"should the file selector allow emblem editing" etc etc.

(ii) Directories:  Is this GEP limited to files, or does it cover directories 
as well?  See (iii) below; also:  are there two icons for a directory, 
reflecting "open" versus "closed" folder states?

(iii) Change notification:  Is there an explicit system for change 
notification?  The following events might imply the icon should change:
	- change of theme
	- change of file content (so that the thumbnail needs regenerating)
	- for certain directories, there might be separate icons represening state 
(e.g. empty versus non-empty trash, mounted versus unmounted zip drives etc), 
which ought to update when various state changes occur.
	- change of emblem (if emblems are implemented by embedding within images)

(iv)  Are icons supplied as images, as widgets, or as canvas items?  Having a 
system to manufacture widgets/canvas items for icons might allow emblems and 
change notification to be handled internally to the object, without requiring 
client intervention.  It could also transparently provide a right-click 
context menu.  It would also support lots of eye-candy ideas I won't bore you 
with (the real reason I'm proposing this...).  But it might make the API much 
more rigid.

Hope the above is a useful contribution.

Dave