[Nautilus-list] WebDAV general comments and a couple of questions

["R. Steven Rainwater" <srainwater ncc com>]

I've been hearing that Nautilus supports WebDAV for a while so
I decided to try it out today.

First, some general comments, which I think just point out the
need for better documentation, more intuitive design, or maybe
smarter users? :-)

I'm not complaining here, but I think those who are working
on this stuff might benefit from a real-life user experience.

It took me well over an hour to figure out how to use Nautilus 
as a WebDAV client. I started by what I thought was the most
logical route of simply looking on all the menus for the word 
"WebDAV". No luck. Next I tried looking in the help menu 
selections for "WebDAV". No luck there either but I may have 
missed it since I couldn't find a way to search the help files. 
Next I tried right-clicking on various random things looking for
a context menu that mentioned WebDAV. Again, no luck. I searched 
on Google for a while and eventually ran across a cryptic 
reference that mentioned that Nautilus used the concept of "web 
folders". This got me started trying to use the "new folder" 
selection from the desktop context menu and then messing with 
the folder properties to turn it into a "web folder". Needless to
say this didn't work either. At this point, I fire up Red Carpet,
downloaded the absolute latest version of (Ximian) Nautilus, and
repeated the above steps. Still no luck. 

In the past, I had noticed you could enter a URL directly into 
Nautilus and see the web page (not sure why this is needed when
I have a web browser, so I really don't use it much). Anyway it 
eventually occured to me that maybe if I loaded the URL in 
question, some new context menu or button might appear to let me 
use WebDAV. Of course, when I put in the URL, I was presented not 
with the web page (which I expected based on the prior behaviour
of Nautilus) but with the WebDAV username & password query. Once I
put in the needed information, Nautilus issued some PROPFIND 
commands and listed out the web site files. Woohoo! I was finally 
on the way. 

It seems to me that Nautilus would benefit greatly from a more
intuitive way of starting WebDAV. Perhaps some menu options like:

 file->New Window->URL
 file->New Window->WebDAV
 file->New Window->Local Folder
 etc...

This has the advantage of being self-documenting, unlike the 
current system which can only be discovered by luck or prior
knowledge.

Anyway, this leads to my questions:

1. Nautilus doesn't appear to ask whether I'm giving it a URL 
because I want to see a web site or because I want a WebDAV
connection - how does it decide which to do? I can see that it
has a drop-down to select whether to view the URL as a WebDAV
server or a web site but was only visible *after* I was asked 
for a username/password.  Does Nautilus just attempt to log 
into every web server it comes across that's running WebDAV? 
This could get annoying as WebDAV becomes more common!

2. I've now figured out how to get the list of files from the
WebDAV server and it appears I can retreive a file by dragging
it from the WebDAV folder to a local folder. And I can send a
file to the server by dragging it from a local folder to the
WebDAV folder. But a few question on file xfers remain... 
how do I:

a) create a local copy of the WebDAV folder? 

b) perform a sync between the local copy and the server? 

c) put a read or write lock on file(s) on the server? My first
guess on locking was a properties option on the file's context 
menu but it didn't have anything that looked hopeful. I'm 
assuming Nautilus does (or will) support WebDAV file locking?
(This is the main reason for using WebDAV, after all.)

d) determine which files have been locked by other WebDAV
users? Nautilus doesn't give any indication of which files on 
the server are locked. Attempting to upload a locked file 
results in a "directory busy" message, which may be confusing 
if you don't already know that the file in question is locked. 
A lock icon on the file would be ideal and, failing that, a 
message like "file is locked" would be a bit more meaningful 
to the average user.

3. I noticed that the "tree" tab in the left-hand side panel
continues to show a tree of my local hard disk instead of a tree
of the WebDAV server. Is this intentional or a bug? Is there a 
way to use the tree panel to show the WebDAV server?

4. It looks like Nautilus/VFS is retrieving rendered rather than 
raw files from the WebDAV server. (That is, if a given file on the
web server contains a server-side include or some other dynamic 
content, Nautilus is retreiving the web page as a browser sees it 
as opposed to the raw source file with the include directive.) 
This was a common problem with early WebDAV clients and is a major
problem for anyone using WebDAV to maintain a web site that has 
dynamic content. The WebDAV protocol supports a method of 
retreiving the actual unrendered files (SOURCE PROPERTY maybe?).
Is this availabe in Nautilus/VFS? If not, is it planned for a 
future version? Maybe a WebDAV Raw and WebDAV Rendered. (though
I'm not sure that the rendered files are actually useful for 
anything - if I wanted one, I could always do a "view source" in
my web browser or use wget to grab the site).

Again, none of this is meant as a complaint and one nice thing
I noticed from looking at the Apache logs on our server is that
Nautilus/VFS seems to be using the WebDAV server much more
efficiently than Adobe GoLive's WebDAV client. 

-Steve


_____________________________________________________________________
R. Steven Rainwater * http://www.ncc.com/humans/srainwater/index.html
"As you struggle to save humanity be sure to avoid electrodes in
your path"  -- Robotron 2084