Re: some thoughts..

[robert havoc pennington <rhpennin midway uchicago edu>]

On Wed, 6 May 1998, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> [fm stuff]

I won't comment much, someone else probably will, but I'll just say that I
don't know why everyone's main concern with the file manager is memory
use. If you are worried about memory, use mv/rm/ls, or text-mode mc. gmc
is only 800K, anyway. The point of it is usability. Usability concerns
should be foremost. Compare gmc's menus and dialogs with those of kfm or
Windows explorer. Don't you think that's more pressing than a few K? 
If I was going to hack on it, that's what I'd work on, anyway.

gmc also already does a lot of what you mentioned, and in general is
already small, fast, and versatile. It's really a great program, I think,
except that the Gnome GUI is still too much like regular mc and not enough
like other GUI file managers. Except for the Gnome cosmetics its code is
already well-tested and debugged. That's why it was used.

> 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

I have this in my copy of the libgnomeui TODO list, though it isn't
committed yet.  GnomeFileSelection is an open project for anyone reading
the list that wants to work on it. ;-) If you write it, you can go nuts
adding your favorite features. Someone write it! Please!

> 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..
>

800K, and if you're not using it it's swapped out - big deal. If you have
a separate icon process it will have to duplicate code and have some kind
of interface to gmc, resulting in more total memory if you do click on an
icon. And why are you going to have icons if you never click on them?

Memory is really not a big issue on Unix if you aren't using the program.
I've had StarOffice running unused for a few days, and don't even notice,
even though it's probably around 20 megs at least. It just swaps out.
 
>  - 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!
> 

I've been meaning to work on gnomine, it seems to be abandoned and my
roommate is about to destroy my mouse playing it. I have to finish some
libgnomeui stuff first though, and I'm about to have job hunt followed by
finals followed by graduation so I might not get to it for a while. :(

I'd suggest setting X to treat left+right as middle, though, for this
particular problem.

Havoc Pennington
http://pobox.com/~hp