Re: some comments on gmc

[Paul Seelig <pseelig goofy zdv uni-mainz de>]

gandalf@pobox.com (Chris Rogers) writes:

> On Sat, 9 Jan 1999, Gleef wrote:
> > On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> > > 
> > > > ** There is no way to completely quit gmc without an "skill gmc".
> > > 
> > > Should we add one?  thing is: the file manager also controls the
> > > desktop.
> > 
> > Another thing, now that we have good DND and CORBA support, I think it
> > makes sense to split the two (obviously not for 1.0), perhaps into a
> > gmc and a gmc-desktop.  It would allow the two separate concepts
> > (file management and desktop management) to be handled independantly for
> > those who want to keep them separate.  It should also make maintenance
> > easier, since as it stands now a bug in either takes both sections out
> 
> I can't agree with this more, the desktop and gmc should be split up, one
> of the biggest turn-offs of KDE to me was the fact that they did the
> window style "the file browser is the UI"  now I know that they are fairly
> seperate in Gnome, but I think it should be complete, gmc should just be
> another app, and not have control of other aspects of the environment
> (such as the desktop)
>
Just to throw in my own two cents: I fullheartedly agree!

I think one of the main design problems of KDE was this terrible
merging of at least three concepts and thus overly complicating
things.  They deemed it necessary to make the file manager be
responsible for the desktop management, for the file management and
above all tailored it to be a web browser too.  Needless to say that
KFM is neither a good file manager nor a flexible web browser,
although they got at least the desktop management somewhat right, but
since this only worked with the file manager running the lost. I'm
writing in past tense because i haven't had any exposure to KDE in
almost half a year and therefore don't know what it's up to currently.
AFAIK it was intended the desktop management from the file manager,
but i don't know what is the current state of affairs.

I sincerely hope that GNOME's MC doesn't repeat this design failure
and aims at being an outstanding file manager as it still is in it's
console incarnation.  With all due respect and without aiming at
wanting to annoy anybody i'd even dare to say that GMC somehow fails
to be a well designed file manager as well.  The best approach for a
Linux file manager i've tried for X11 (though i still do prefer using
"rxvt -e mc" ;) is the nicely done tkdesk-1.1, but mainly because it
is heavily influenced by the great features of the NeXTStep workspace
manager, which IMHO is the best file browser concept i've experienced
so far on any desktop.  To learn more about this application please
check out "http://www3.pair.com/mccarthy/nextstep/".  An effort to
implement something like this using the WINGs widget set of Window
Maker and featuring some probably reusable code can be found at
"http://www.csn.ul.ie/~clernong/projects/fsviewer.html".  I'd wish GMC
would follow this kind of route some more...

KDE's KFM is IMHO just an imitation of the bad Win9x explorer and i
find it somewhat desillusioning that GMC seems to follow the same path
lately although it could probably be done far better.  Just take a
peak at what the NeXT people have done for the desktop.

And yet again i regret that i can't contribute the needed code for
putting some positive weight in my argument - talk is just too cheap
and i'm really sorry for that. :-(
                                   Thank you, P. *8^)
-- 
   --------- Paul Seelig <pseelig@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de> -----------
   African Music Archive - Institute for Ethnology and Africa Studies
   Johannes Gutenberg-University   -  Forum 6  -  55099 Mainz/Germany
   ------------------- http://ntama.uni-mainz.de --------------------