Re: [Nautilus-list] FW: Preview Release Comments

[Ben Ford <bford talontech com>]

John Sullivan wrote:

>
> > 2.    The drive mount icons should have a mount/unmount menu item in the
> > menu also an eject menu item.
>
> Gene Ragan (gzr eazel com) added an unmount menu item just a couple of days
> ago. I'm pretty sure the drives only appear if mounted, so a "mount" item
> wouldn't make sense, and "eject" would be indistinguishable from "unmount".
> Gene (or somebody) should correct me if I'm wrong.
>

Sorry! =)  Whil the drive may not be available, a mountpoint certainly is.  And
eject is quite different than unmount.  Eject pops out the CD and unmount only
detaches it from the filesystem.  I like the way GMC handles this for desktop
icons.

>
> > 3.    I cannot get mimetypes to work for certian applications (ie.
> > gnumeric among others)
>
> I think there's a known problem with gnumeric in that its files are
> indistinguishable from gzip files (since they are in fact gzipped). Maybe
> that's what you ran into? (I thought there was a bug report about this but I
> couldn't find one just now.) It would be helpful to us if you submitted
> specific bug reports about each problem in this area that you've
> encountered.

It is a gzipped file, but it uses a distinguishable file extension.
(filename.gnumeric)

>
> > 7.    I would also like to see a menu item for "Delete File" instead of
> > only "Move to Trash"  This could be configurable to only show in
> > the advanced user menus.
>
> I know that many people like this idea, so it would be good if somebody
> would write it up as a bug. I personally think it's a bad idea, for several
> reasons, which I could go into at great length if anyone really thought it
> would be worthwhile. The short summary is: adds complexity, adds danger,
> adds almost zero benefit.
>

I agree with the delete idea.  I hate having to empty the Recycle Bin on that
"other" OS.  Often I am quite certain that I do want it deleted and want it
definately to just go away.  My proposal has been to make the "Move to Trash"
button drop down if held for a second and reveal the "Permanantly Delete Item"
button, similar to the "Back" button on Netscape.

>
> > 8.    For the "Show Properties" funciton,  it would be nice if I could
> > select multiple files and have it open one window so I can set the
> > properties of those files to a common property (ie. If I want to
> > put the same emblem on multiple files,  have only one window
> > come up to do that.  This is possible in gmc.)
>
> This idea has come up before. It's tricky from a UI point of view to make it
> work well and be understandable. Some of the properties shown (e.g. "name")
> can't possibly apply to multiple files. You've got to have a way to
> distinguish "applies to none/applies to some/applies to all" for each
> property that can be set on multiple files. Switching from "applies to some"
> to "applies to all" is probably a one-way change, which can be frustrating.
>
> I tried to test how this works in GMC right now, but when I selected two
> icons and right-clicked on one the menu didn't include "Properties..." like
> it usually does. How do you invoke this behavior in GMC?

Many word processors will work in a similar fashion.  If you have a paragraph
with a line bolded and a nother line italicized, and you select all the text,
both the bold and italics will appear greyed out.  Basically, if an entire
selection matches a property, then that property is displayed, if not, it is
greyed, but you can click it and change the whole selection's properties.
(Being greyed is supposed to mean mean not editable so maybe a different color?)

Is it worth the coding?  Probably not.



I had an idea a while back and the thread unfortunately died before anything was
resolved.  Is their anybody working to improve the clipboard concept,
specifically to make it multi-dimensional?  My suggestion was to make a sidebar
component where you could copy items to and then paste them out of order.  I
think that it should be a component of the Gnome environment rather than
specifically Nautilus; there could be a panel applet and all.  I like the idea
of being able to see the clipboard in the sidebar.  Will we be able to code
third party sidebar components so that I can implement this for myself?

-b