Re: [Nautilus-list] Nautilus Goals

[Ross Burton <r burton 180sw com>]

On 25 Jun 2001 14:37:07 -0400, mitch nuclear physics gatech edu wrote:
> A.)Mozilla:
> 	Why does Nautilus need to use mozilla? Doesn't this produce a lot
> of overhead? Nautilus should browse files, perhaps be used for
> configurations, and simple html use. Wouldn't gtkhtml get the job done and
> done quicker?

That is possible - remove the Mozilla component and install the
nautilus-gtkhtml component.  GTKHTML is not the best browser in the
world, but it's very fast and small, which is what I want when I'm
looking a HTML files in Nautilus.

> C.)GTK
> 	Being realistic, how much is gtk 1.2.x slowing Nautilus down? In
> my experience, QT has proved to be faster. The worse case I can think of
> is for users in 16 bit and even worse in 15 bit. Gtk has to dither
> down. If the user is in 15 bit, gtk has to dither down to 16 and then
> dither down to 15. This makes things god awful slow. Gtk 2.0 should be
> faster and better but it's of course not mainstream yet and the extent at
> which gtk 1.2.x slows things down is not really known. Or is it?

GNOME apps use GTK+.  KDE apps use Qt.  Nautilus is a GNOME app.

> E.)Useful Features
[snip]
> Ex. have two delete options. A.) Delete/move to
> trash. B.)Delete Advanced->delete files containing ..,, delete files
> starting with, delte files ending with, delete files of date, etc.....
> So one could click on "Delete Advance", a window pops up with a checkbox
> for the style of delete and a insertion field on the bottom. Anyway, you
> guys get the point

But what if I want "move files with date" or "copy files starting with".
What you're describing is a search to get a subset of files, and then
Select All, Delete.

> F.)Clearer Navigation
> THe nautilus window should at all times show a clear way of moving between
> any disk and the network. Icons of each disk(cdrom, floppy, zip,
> individual partition icons making up the image of a whole hard disk,
> etc..) should be showed on the nautilus window. Then there should be a
> icon for the local netwowrk for browsing the shares of other
> computers. However, even these suggestions should be thought over much
> more carefully than I have done in order not to confuse the user of
> duplicate things. 

I'm against showing partitions (or even hard disks) as seperate icons,
the entire point of the single-root directory structure is to move away
from partitions. My /home is a seperate partition, but why should the
users know that?  Removable media, however, does need to be handled by
Nautilus - I love the current solution - put a disk in and the icon
appears on the desktop.

> The real solution is for the Nautilus and gnome teams to get together,
> discuss UI possibilities, compromise on a solution, and everyone stick to
> it. The full UI should not be redundant or confusing. If I want to browse
> the local network, I shouldn't have to decide between 5 different ways.It
> should be clear that I must do it via Nautilus.

The power of Unix is that There Is More Than One Way To Do It - a saying
very common is the perl community.  If I want to delete a selection of
files, I can delete them one by one with rm, use find and rm, use
Nautilus and delete them file by file, or do a Medusa search and delete
all matching files.

Also, IMHO Nautilus isn't "the" GNOME file manager, it's "a" GNOME file
manager.  Sawfish is packaged by default with GNOME as a window manager,
but any user is welcome to use Enlightenment, WindowMaker, Blackbox et
al if they want to.

Just some random comments from my 9am mail drop.

Ross
--
Ross Burton                     Software Engineer
OneEighty Software Ltd          Tel: +44 20 8680 8712
Cygnet House                    Fax: +44 20 8680 8453
12-14 Sydenham Road             r burton 180sw com
Croydon, Surrey CR9 2ET, UK     http://www.180sw.com./
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