[Nautilus-list] Suggestions

[Abe Fettig <abe fettig net>]

Hello all.

I've only been on this list for the past couple of weeks, so sorry if
these issues have allready been discussed.

I'm a web applications programmer, building dynamic websites mostly in
python with various database backends.  I've been using linux as a
full-time desktop OS for the past 2 years.  Like many linux users, I
don't need to use a GUI file manager, but I value eye candy enough to
use one ;-).  I've been using nautilus ever since 1.03 came out, with
it's greatly improved config options.

Anyhow, before nautilus I was using EFM, the enlightenment file manager
that's now being rewritten to integrate with the upcoming enlightenment
0.17.  There are a few features from EFM that I _really_ miss:

* wildcard selection.  In EFM, typing *.py would select all the python
files in a directory.  This seems like something that could be added to
Nautilus without taking away from it's user-friendlyness.

* shell commands. Probably the biggest thing that EFM had going for it
was that you could just type commands right on top of the GUI.  What you
were typing would show up in a translucent window over the tops of the
icons, and then you could hit enter and the command would run, in the
current directory.  So if an EFM window had focus you could just type
"vim file.txt" and it would run. (You could also set handlers for
commands you typed in, so that anything that started with 'www.' would
be handled by mozilla. THAT was cool - on an empty desktop with an EFM
root window, you could just type "www.slashdot.org", and a browser would
open.)

I know that adding this type of feature to nautilus probably would be
confusing to new users.  But for advanced users, being able to quickly
run a shell command in the current directory is a very common need.
Maybe with some brainstorming, we could come up with a nice clean
implementation of this feature that wouldn't be confusing to newbies.

* font and color management.  In EFM it was really easy to set fonts,
images, and background colors.  Just right click a ttf file and pick
"set as default view font", or right-button-drag it to a directory view
to use that font for that directory. Likewise with image files and
backgrounds.  Whether or not this would work in Nautilus debatable.  But
one feature that I do think makes sense would be being able to
right-button-drag an image to the desktop to set it as a background
image.

Other than my EFM experience, there's one other config options I'd like
to see in Nautilus:

* Seperate "use smoother graphics" into "use smoother images" and "use
smooth fonts".  I would love to have translucent icons but still use my
standard GTK font.

Hope this is helpful.  Thanks for the great work!

Abe