[Nautilus-list] Question about a feature

[Taupter <taupter baydenet com br>]

Hello all


It's my first and maybe my last post to this mailing list. I'm just an
user, and I would be happy to know if a feature that exists in
MS-Explorer will exist in Nautilus. I don't know what is the English
name of that feature because I run (often) Windows 98 Brazilian edition
(mostly to watch DVD movies. My "99% of the time" environment is Debian
2.2 with Gnome compiled from tar.gz).

That consists in viewing a directory contents using small icons at the
left side of the name of the file, all files agrouped in collumns, like
the pseudo-graphic below:

[]Directory 1   []File 13   []File 28
[]Directory 2   []File 14   []File 29
[]Directory 3   []File 15   []File 30
[]File 01       []File 16   []File 31
[]File 02       []File 17   []File 32
[]File 03       []File 18
[]File 04       []File 19
[]File 05       []File 20
[]File 06       []File 21
[]File 07       []File 22
[]File 08       []File 23
[]File 09       []File 24
[]File 10       []File 25
[]File 11       []File 26
[]File 12       []File 27
===============================<>====

Please be very imaginative to see this as a window, "[]" as an icon and
"======<>====" as an scrollbar. Note that the directories are agrouped
in the start of the 1st collumn, and the collumns change width according
to the longest name in the collumn (every collumn can have its own
width).

This feature exists in MS-Explorer, but doesn't exist in GMC or
Konqueror neither. I consider this viewing mode very useful to handle
directories with a huge number of files, and easier to handle than the
"icon-on-top-of-the-name", "one-collumn-list" or

"   []        []        []
 File 01   File 02   File 03

    []        []        []
 File 04   File 05   File 06

    []
 File 07                     "

modes widely used in GNOME/KDE file managers. It's very impratical to
browse and organize a directory with 1500 or more files in the current
way. I never understood why they never implemented that multple collumns
viewing.

The multiple collumns view is very useful, allows the visualization of a
large ammount of information in a window (sometimes those icons are a
waste of screen space... :) ), reduces screen flickering (we don't need
to scroll a lot of the window contents to reach a file) and has a
cleaner file identification (it's easier to find a file by its name
browsing the directory by this way. That icon view is a pain to do the
same task).

You all are doing a wonderful work at Eazel, developing a new concept,
and I'm just a user. I didn't run any Nautilus preview, so I really
don't know how the interface group is handling its task. I just think,
from a user's point of view, that it would be nice to have that feature.
Some of my coleagues (Linux users who are not subscribed to
Nautilus-list) share the same point of view. As I'm not able to
contribute with code (my coding capabilities are very stained) I think I
could contribute at least with some ideas to enhance the user
experience.


Thanks in advance


Claudio