Re: [Nautilus-list] A newbie's questions and sugestions.

[Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>]

Trying to give a non-expert reply since the more knowledgeable people
seem to be fully occupied with the GNOME2 version of Nautilus :-)


Mark Finlay wrote:
> Hey,
> my name is mark, I'm new to the list and I'm hopeing that someone will
> have the patience to answer some of my questions.
> 
> Has nautilus been completely swallowd by the Gnome project? are there
> gnome developers working on it? will the Gnome 2 release coinside with
> the release of a bigger better nautilus?

Since GNOME 1.4, Nautilus has been a core part of GNOME, and most (all?)
of the people currently hacking on Nautilus are GNOME hackers.


> I have nautilus 1.4 running on mandrake 8.1 and when i copy files from a
> cd they are all 0 byte. i couldn't find any mention of it in the
> changelogs. anyone else have this problem. mabye it's a mdk problem.

Maybe. You could try reporting this to the Mandrake people if you are
unsure.


> Does nautilus have a plugin arhchitecture.

Nautilus is very componentized (sp?). I don't know of an actual plug-in
arcitecture for Nautilus though, other than the ability to add your own
Nautilus shell scripts.


> There are alot of things that
> i would like to be able to do without using the console and that i think
> might be useful to a lot of people, but they might slow the program so a
> lot of ppl wouldnt want them. for example:
> 
> 1. to be able to right click a folder and click on "Browse from here"
> and have a new nautilus window open with that folder as the top level.

Already there, at least in Nautilus 1.0.6. Right-click on the folder and
select "Open in New Window".


> 2. in the tree sidebar: to have a different icon for top level folders
> and second and third level. it is quite confusing when you have miles of
> subfolders and you don't know what level they are on.

I'm not so sure about the need for this, but if you feel this might be a
useful addition, please file an enhancement request at
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=nautilus.


> 3. a winzip style "add to zip" and "extract to /[filename]" for zips.
> Is there an easy way to add extra commands to the right click menus or
> would i have to edit nautilus code?

This should be easy to do with Nautilus shell scripts, but the option
will be present for all files I think. I bet there is already a Nautilus
script for this. :)


> 4.to be able to right click a .iso and have the option to mount it or
> burn it.

Same as the above.


> 5. anyone used XP yet. on know its M$ but it has a nice feature where
> you can use "Send to" to and any file to a special folder which you can
> then burn to a cd. I'd love to be able to add this functionality to
> nautilus. along with the ability to make an iso of the files.

Probably the same as the above. If you don't think that the possibility
to add scripts for this is enough, you can file enhancement requests
(using the link above).


> oh and i have one or 2 humble suggestions:
> the "Nautilus" folder in home, i think it would be better as a virtual
> folder like :trash. but as an idea  think it had a lot of potential and
> other software should be encouraged to make their own sub-folders.

I think the "Nautilus" folder in $HOME has disappeared from never
versions of Nautilus; it is no longer used.


> I moved from windows to kde to gnome and i really miss the ability to
> right click the desktop and add a shortcut or launcher.

I agree about this one; please add an enhancement request :-)


> Another great feature of xp is that when a folder contains photos the
> folder icons has 4 thumbnails to give you an idea of whats in there -
> this is particularly useful for those of us who have large archives of
> photos.

Also a perfect candidate for an enhancement request. Please bear in mind
though that new features are a low priority, as a lot of the work by
Nautilus hackers is spent on porting Nautilus to GNOME 2 and improving
stability and speed. The chances of new features for becoming a reality
will improve dramatically if someone (you or someone else) can provide a
patch. Don't hesitate to add enhancement requests though, as there is
always a chance someone else will find it useful and implement it.


> back to the questions: Will nautilus be the default will all versions of
> gnome 2? in particular on solaris.

Yeah. Nautilus is, and will be, the default for all new versions of
GNOME since GNOME 1.4, and thus also in GNOME 2.0.


Christian