Re: [Nautilus-list] Re: slowness

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Darin Adler <darin bentspoon com> writes:

> on 10/17/01 5:02 PM, Maciej Stachowiak at mjs noisehavoc org wrote:
> 
> > That's how it worked at first, and Owen strongly disapproved. It does
> > look a little silly for desktop links to appear first with a generic
> > icon, and then later with the real icon. I don;t have a very strong
> > opinion on which way is better.
> 
> I think the hysteresis might have an effect. With a .1 second hysteresis you
> are much more likely to see the links appear with the wrong icon first than
> with a long one. But then again, once all the files are discovered, the
> hysteresis doesn't matter any more, so perhaps I'm wrong.
> 
> It does seem like we threw the baby out with the bath water if we made all
> directory views slower so that desktop links can work in a fancier way.

Well, it didn't just look a little silly, it looked awful.

The sad fact is that in most cases, one could just read all the 
desktop files and display the icons in a small fraction of
a second; in fact, the Nautilus version we are shipping reads
desktop files synchronously and works fine even on pretty large
directories full of desktop files.

I may be way off base here, but it sometimes seems to me that all the
async stuff nautilus does results in much worse common case behavior
in order to prevent worst case behavior (hundreds of desktop files on a
http link or something.)

Perhaps Nautilus needs some prehinting: So, it can say:

 - I don't think this file is going to get a custom icon, so lets
   display it immediately, and if it gets one we can correct.
 - This is a desktop file, I know it's going to get a custom
   name icon, 

Or maybe even:

 - oh, this is a desktop file on a local file system, it will be
   faster to just read it in rather than to put it in an async queue for
   processing".

The alternative seems to be spending a bunch of thought cycles on
figuring out:

 - Whether the async queuing system really slows things down or
   its just an illusion.
 - If it's an illusion, how do we remove it. (Tweaking the hysteresis
   value? better positioning algorithms?)
 - If it is slower, how to speed it up.

Not saying anything revolutionary, but it's a huge improvement to the
user experience if in the common case of a few files in a local
directory they can just be _there_.

 - Waiting
 - Icons and names changing
 - Files shifting around

Are all serious distractions.

Regards,
                                        Owen