Re: [Nautilus-list] snap-to-grid feature I'd like to write

[Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com>]

On 12/20/01 9:46 AM, "Alex Duggan" <alex openup com> wrote:

> Where are the positons of the user's desktop icons stored?

They are stored in metadata. You use calls from nautilus-file.h to read and
write the metadata. The code for this is in fm-icon-view.c. The actual files
on disk where the metadata gets stored for the desktop is the
.nautilus-metadata.xml file in the desktop directory
(~/.gnome-desktop/.nautilus-metafile.xml in the latest versions of
Nautilus). But writing directly to that file is not a part of the solution
for a snap to grid feature, because changing the file won't cause the icons
to move unless you quit Nautilus and restart, and there's no shared-access
protocol for that file to prevent Nautilus from overwriting changes made to
it directly.

> How hard will this feature be to write?

I don't know. I tried at one point, and wasn't able to figure out all the
details.

> I'm just looking to write a snap-to-grid for the desktop just like gmc has.

Maybe it will be easy.

    -- Darin