[Nautilus-list] Some comments on the "Nautilus 1.0 Feature List"

["Blad, John Erling" <john erling blad aftenposten no>]

Found some items on the feature list I want to comment. Perhaps
some items are of interest. I have *not* tried to run Nautilus, my
comments are mostly just ideas from other projects.

English is *NOT* my native language.. ;)

---- FILE ----

New Window - Creates a new Nautilus window when on "Icon view"
Not to sure about this "Icon view". Any better description? Okey,
I sort of know, but what is the alternative?

New File - Creates a new file in the viewed location
It could be nice to be able to create an empty file and open
it in a viewer/editor. As a minimum it should be possible to touch
a file and then open with default actions on the suffix.

Open - Blah, blah, blah..
What if the user tries to open a txt-file and a jpg-file?

Show Properties - Blah, blah..
It could be nice to have a "Multiple Properties window", instead of
a dialog box for each file and/or folder.

Trash, is it possible to keep the original path somehow? Something like
you delete a file, then it is moved to trash and some kind of shadow file
is left in the folder and marks the file as deleted. This shadow file should
be hidden if a new file is stored in the folder with the same name. If the
trashed file is deleted then the shadow file goes away. This makes it
easy to restore a spesific file from the trash folder even if this contains
>1K files.

Empty Trash -
Duplicate entry? "Delete from Trash". Also in "Delete from Trash" is
a comment about "Only in menu when the selected items are in the Trash".
A menu should never change.

Duplicate -
Bad shortcut (My preference..)

Find - 
Some ideas... 
Basically, what do you do when you don't know what you are looking for?
And how do you present posiibly >1K of hits in a way the user grasp
easilly..

Web Search -
It should be possible to use different search engines even if Eazel would
like everyone to use theires. ;)

The last two entries should have some kind of history. Note also that the
two last entries should not necessarilly be two unique entries but the
user *should* know when he searches the net.

---- EDIT ----

Undo -
This should be multilevel. And it should be possible to "Undo something
previous done", that is not the last ation.

Cut and Paste -
This is really another application (?) but it would be nice to have some
kind
of list of items from previous actions.

Backgrounds, etc -
Isn't this really themes? Should this be handled in the application or at
some
higher level? It *should* be possible to give an application some spesific
appearence as this makes Gnome more attractive for vendors. Still I don't
like the idea of "web-like" applications. Hmm.. This is another discussion.

Emblems -
This is not visual properties of the application, they are system spesific.
I
belive so..

---- VIEW ----

In the View menu there is an inconsistency. It is possible to make virtual
directories/folders of files with some properties/emblems. How is it
possible
swap betveen such folders? Tabs in the left pane? It should be in the View
menu too.

---- GO ----

History in various forms
It would be nice to have a flat history but also history connected to
different
views. Perhaps it is possible to "learn" Nautilus that some types of files
can
be grouped that way..

----BOOKMARKS ----

----HELP ----

Help Browser -
Eiter Nautilus have a built in browser capability or it should use an
external
browser, possibly an external help system. An integrated consistent help
system would be great!

---- SKI SIGNS ----

Search - Complexity Options
All kind of options should be choosen according to what the user tries to
do.
If he searces for some kind of file (looks like a filename) the all
appropriate
options should be set. If it looks like a text string other options should
be
set. Ie, if there is chars that's not legal or very unusual in the search
string
then it is a free text search (for example).

---- TOOLBAR ----

Simple Find vs Search Subject -
I don't think there should be any difference betveen those two.

Likewise I belive the difference betveen File Find and Web Find is
artificial.

---- LOCATION BAR ----

Location vs Web Find -
As previous note

---- SIDEBAR ----

Emblems Tab -
Sort of flat directory structure based upon user created and system
generated
emblems. User created ones are "Draft" and "Urgent". System generated ones
are "Application" and "Picture".

---- FILE MANAGER, POPUP MENU ----

<alternate views, pivoting>
A file or a directory has one or more emblems. Some are for this file alone,
some are inherited from parent directories. If you select a file, for
example "gimp"
then this has a system generated emblem "Application" which shows up in the
menu. Selecting this item brings up all files with the emblem "Application"
in the
file manager. That is emacs, gcalc, xpaint, etc.

An alternate approach is to have an entry "Pivot" in the menu. This opens
the
emblems list in the sidebar. The list will only contains those emblems the
file
holds. One of the emblems will then be "Application" and selecting this will
bring
up all files with this emblem.

The last approach get rid of (some of) the dynamic behaviour. This is a real
gain.


John Erling Blad
ITU, rom a55, 5 etg.
Tlf: 22 86 44 77
Mob: 90 64 38 29