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

[John Sullivan <sullivan spies com>]

on 10/18/01 2:53 PM, Tuomas Kuosmanen at tigert ximian com wrote:

> On Wed, 2001-10-17 at 18:17, John Sullivan wrote:
> I think technically the mime-folder-hierarchy wouldn't be too hard, but I
> think there are at least four major usability problems with it:
> 
> (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.
> 
> No, if you dont know about the mime hierarchy, just dont create one. If
> the user has a ~/.gnome/nautilus-scripts/mime/ directory, then nautilus
> would treat scripts inside the mime/ folder so that they only show up in
> the menu if the mime type matches the path name under mime/ (image/jpeg
> for example). All "normal" scripts would still be in
> ~/.gnome/nautilus-scripts/ like they are now.
> 
> (2) Using the hierarchy in this way precludes a commonly-asked-for feature
> of letting the user create arbitrary subfolders in the scripts folder.
> 
> You still can, you just dont want to name your subfolder "mime".

You wouldn't be able to mix the two. Either a script would be in the mime
hierarchy, and not organized arbitrarily, or vice-versa. Two parallel
hierarchies with the same root for completely different purposes sounds
confusing at least. I suppose in practice you could use links to ensure that
there's only one actual copy of each script, but it still seems confusing.

> (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.
> 
> No, the MIME scripts could even be on the context menu's toplevel, there
> could be a new group between "Rename" and "Move to Trash" where those
> would be. Like Jonathan's "Format floppy" example. Since the scripts you
> put to the mime stuff are likely to be pretty specific, and you would
> not be having all your scripts on the menu at once like you do now with
> the "all scripts handle all files" situation.

I understand your proposal, but I still think it is a confusing
relationship: Scripts at the top level (or in user-created arbitrary
folders) show up in the Scripts menu. Scripts inside the "mime" subfolder at
various levels (mime/image/*, mime/image/jpeg/*) are flattened and inserted
into the File and right-click context menus as if they were standard
built-in menu items.

It sounds powerful, and confusing. I am always tempted to push back to
minimize confusion, but I understand the allure of "powerful".

John