some thoughts..

[Timo Sirainen <aaaaaa sicom fi>]

Just some thoughts about gnome and mostly file manager.. Maybe you've
discussed about these before, but I just started to actually read this
list only few days ago..

I think file manager should be somewhat "i can do everything" program,
besides being a normal file manager, it should also be able to use ftp,
http, samba?, etc protocols. It should also be able to (un)pack files
using tar/gzip/etc packers, and do other things I can't right now think
of. (I know, gmc does some of these already)

These extensions probably use a lot of memory to do things which usually
aren't done all the time, so it just uses megs of totally useless memory
most of the time. This seems to be the problem with whole KDE, it takes
over 11 megs of memory (+shared 2-5MB?) to do things I mostly don't need.
Solutions? I can think of some:

Start different programs to do it's own things - web browser for http, ftp
client for ftp, some gui-packer for packed packets. Well, maybe, but is
this really user friendly? to start programs which all look and behave
differently?

Can libraries be loaded/unloaded while program is running? All different
extensions could be put to different libs and loaded as necessary.

Could CORBA be used to start extensions similiar to applets in panel? Like
some CORBA-daemon would be in background starting programs as requested..
The extensions then would work in the same file manager window adding
their own menus and drawing own widgets..

OK, enough about memory use, I just hope gnome would take less than 10MB
when it's in "useful" stage.. (Win95 is btw usable with 8MB memory, KDE
isn't usable with 16MB.. hm.. X eats way too much memory..)

File open/save dialog - GTK's default one isn't going to be enough, I
think it should be merged with file manager somehow, dialog should
probably look something like in win95? :) Like having either small icons
(different to each filetype, like in file manager) for each file and after
them the file's name, or then the long file list with more specific file
information. Directories could also be created in this dialog as well as
files/directories moved, removed, renamed and changed their properties.
And what goes to merging of file manager, I think short+long lists should
be in both file manager and file dialog, file manager should also have the 
"big icons" list. So, gnome-libs should have a "short file list" widget,
"long file list" widget and "open/save file" dialog which would use 
short+long widgets. File manager should also use short+long widgets 
besides it's own ones.. I might start doing these dialogs if no-one else
is willing to .. I should first learn how to make widgets and probably
how to use gdk also..

Are you sure gmc is the right file manager to use? I personally don't
like it right now, and because it's ported to many operating systems, it
probably has a lot of useless code. Anyway I'd dare to say that creating a
new fm from scratch would be better since gmc still doesn't seem do very
much.

Should the desktop icon handling belong to file manager? Unless some icon
is really clicked and file manager window is displayed, I think it's a
waste of memory to keep it sitting there at background..

Hm.. what else.. well, a couple of suggestions:

 - using buttons as links in gtk-xmhtml is awful, underlined texts 
please..:)
 - gnomine: left+right mouse click should work like middle mouse button,
winmine works like this and my middle mouse button doesn't work well.. and
the worse problem: when pressing button in field and moving mouse off the
field before releasing mouse, it doesn't open the field!