Re: connected-servers / bookmarks mess

[David Zeuthen <davidz redhat com>]

On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 13:37 +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 14:12 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> > On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 10:30 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> > > > How does OSX handle connected servers these days?
> > > 
> > > I'll check on my OS X box when I get home (am out in Westford today).
> > 
> > OK, I tried playing around with this. I had to set up a Samba server
> > because OS X didn't recognize my DAV shares.
> 
> > http://file.rdu.redhat.com/~davidz/osx-connected-servers/finder-connected-to-media-share-2.png

Also available here

http://people.freedesktop.org/~david/finder-connected-to-media-share-2.png

> > When you log out and then log in, mounts created in a session are gone.
> > Notably OS X doesn't have a concept of bookmarks at all. If you drag one
> > of the mounts to the sidebar or the desktop nothing happens. You can,
> > however, create what is known as an Alias. It looks like this is a
> > kernel-side or HFS+ feature
> 
> What happens if you drag a folder from a share to the places location on
> the sidebar? I think you can do this with normal folders.

I checked with another OS X machine at work; it works for at least
normal folders when dropping into the "FOLDERS part of the side bar;
guess I missed that one, I was trying to drag into the bottom.

> So, what about this then (mostly similar to your proposal, with some
> name tweaks and general ui additions):
> 
> We use bookmark as the main user settable entity, adding custom icons to
> the bookmark store.
> 
> Then we add a checkmark in the bookmark dialog that says "Treat bookmark
> as volume". Enabling this means the bookmark works as a "sever
> bookmark", i.e. it hides any containing mounts (except in computer:),
> and it gets an unmount/eject operation (if the containing mount exists).
> It can also be availible on the desktop. Its still positioned in the
> bookmarks part of the sidebar/panel menu, allowing manual positioning,
> etc.

Do you think we should generate GVolume objects for bookmarks treated as
volumes? I think we might still want that... not sure.

> We also add the volumes/mounts currently showed in the places sidebar to
> the spatial window places menu, making it as easy to use these as in the
> browser view. (Sort of unrelated to the issue, but I think this makes
> sense.)

Yeah, I agree that makes sense.

> We also add a "Desktop" group to "Display" preferences tab, where we
> allow a more fine-grained configuring of what virtual objects to show on
> the desktop:
> Home, Trash, Computer, Network, Mounts, Connected servers
> 
> If connected servers is set we show items for bookmarks set as
> treat-as-volume, and hide their underlying mount. If unset we still hide
> the underlying mount, but don't show the volume icon.
> 
> This adds a few preferences (actually it mostly makes hidden ones
> visible), but I feel that if we're adding to much stuff to the desktop
> we need to make this settable to avoid swamping people not interested in
> things. And this is a pure "preference" after all, nothing "unbreak
> feature" about it, and the desktop is a highly visible resource, so
> configuring it is probably common.

Sounds good to me.

    David