Re: [Nautilus-list] script w/ mime handling

[John Sullivan <sullivan eazel com>]

on 10/17/01 8:52 AM, Jonathan Blandford at jrb redhat com wrote:

> John Sullivan <sullivan eazel com> writes:
> 
> 
>> (1) It puts the burden on every user (or the installer program if there is
>> one) to put each script in the right place. This is much more error-prone
>> than if the script just "does the right thing" in the Scripts folder.
> 
> I don't think this is any harder than the rest of the rigmarole involved
> with installing stuff on a modern system.  With some luck, the user will
> get scripts with an rpm/deb.  We can write a script manager should we
> get to that point.

The Scripts feature as it stands is a simple way for a user to customize
their own copy of Nautilus. It doesn't involve installing anything (other
than via getting scripts from your friends and putting them into the one
Scripts folder). There's a tradeoff between making it harder for each user
and making it easier to automate installation that should be carefully
considered.

> 
>> (2) Using the hierarchy in this way precludes a commonly-asked-for feature
>> of letting the user create arbitrary subfolders in the scripts folder.
>> 
>> (3) It forces users to think about and deal with MIME types explicitly. I
>> don't think we want to limit the utility of the Scripts mechanism to only
>> users who are thoroughly conversant in MIME types.
>> 
>> (4) If the Scripts menu reflects the folder hierarchy, then you've got to
>> navigate multiple levels of hierarchical menus to choose a script, which is
>> a pain. If the Scripts menu doesn't reflect the folder hierarchy, then
>> there's a hard-to-understand relationship between the Scripts folder and the
>> Scripts menu.
> 
> I think the point is that the scripts only appear if you right click on
> an icon of a certain mime-type.  This removes the burden of points 2-4
> from the user.  I personally would love to be able to target specific
> actions on certain file types.  For example, in gmc, I was able to right
> click on the floppy icon and get 'Format floppy'.  This was done via
> gfloppy registering itself with the 'application/x-floppy-device'
> mime-type.  I'd like to be able to do this with nautilus, but don't know
> how to.

I completely agree that it would be good for scripts to (somehow) know
whether they apply to the current selection; I'm just trying to point out
some of the drawbacks with this particular approach.

John