Re: Nautilus vs gnome-shell and the future

[Pierre Wieser <pwieser trychlos org>]

> Date: Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:09:23 +0100
> From: Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>
> 
> Yeah, trying to figure out ways to replace the features of the
> desktop
> is hard. The piles feature while cool doesn't solve the imho most
> important aspect of being a default storage locations for new/active
> files. So, I'm more and more disagreeing with removing the desktop
> from being handled by the file manager.

I'm afraid I don't fully understand what is the exact perimeter
of gnome-shell (window decorator, application launcher, deskbar
replacement, and so on), and I really don't know whether it would
be better for the desktop to be drawn by the file-manager or by g-s.

But I'm pretty sure that the desktop, as a storage place for
my prefered documents, or for documents I've to work on, or
for anything I want, should absolutely be kept.

As a sysadmin, I'm sometimes afraid when I see the desktop of some
users who store each and every documents they receive in their
desktop. This appears as very untidy to me ;-)

Nonetheless, I also do use the desktop of that manner, though, of
course, in a much more tidy way ;-), and I think most of us do so.
I just don't understand why putting documents, file, links to
application, and so on, on the desktop should be considered as
inherently 'bad' (according to g-s specs). IMHO, this appears to
me as just a sort of dogmatic position. If users consider that
their desktop is just the right place to put their documents, 
who am I to decide something else ?

> Of course, we should probably still think of ways we can change it to
> work better in the gnome-shell world. For instance, maybe it would be
> nice to be able to show different desktop contents on different
> workspaces? This would match with using workspaces as a way to manage
> separate "activities". Of course, that would be sort of problematic
> when
> you're accessing the desktop directory from e.g. the file selector.

This surely be very nice to have a different set of desktop icons /
background for each workspace, and according to bugzilla, this is a
long time request of many users (see e.g. [1]).

> > > What do you think of my proposal about piles?

I personally like the idea of enhancing the current 2d-only desktop
metaphor to a 3d view. Not sure if this is rather a pile or a stack,
or if this should only host references or plain files... But being
able to define some container, with a label and an icon, stack some
docs in it, and then being able to thumb (foliate ?) through stacked
documents should be great..

This was my own 2cents...

Regards
Pierre

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48004