Re: [Nautilus-List] Constructive Criticism Revisited

[Ryan Muldoon <rpmuldoon students wisc edu>]

On Tue, 2002-01-29 at 21:56, James Mitchell Allmond wrote:
>  
> > nautilus is a browser.
> > 
> Well it shouldn't be. Galeon and Mozilla are browsers. Making Nautilus a
> browser accomplishes nothing new. Funny, I was under the impression that
> Nautilus was suppose to be a file browser.
> 
Nautilus has always been advertised as a "graphical desktop shell," not
a file browser. It just so happens that the main development thrust thus
far has been in the normal file browsing.  The whole idea (which I agree
with) is to let users focus on the task at hand, rather than having to
think about which application does what.  They just get the
functionality.  The idea hasn't yet been fully realized, but there are
only so many hours in the day.

> 
> 
> > anyway, this whole discussion is pretty much moot at the moment, since
> > there is a UI freeze in less than 2 weeks.  this should be brought up
> > again in another 2 months when 
> > a) the head developers can look at it, and
> > b) a single interface can be agreed upon that is both efficient and
> > intuitive
> > 
> 
> Then it seems I'm wasting my time. 
Just because a feature doesn't make it in this week doesn't mean you are
wasting your time.  The main nautilus developers (also known as Darin)
are busy with just porting nautilus to the gnome2 platform and getting
it stable and such.  New features are something to be added on once the
core product is stable.

I have work to do and the little
> inconvinence caused by a poor file browser doesn't outrank the time I'm
> spending to help correct it. 
Well, it's fun, isn't it? ;-)  And like I said, it isn't as if there is
a statement from on high stating that nautilus is feature/UI frozen for
all time.  Just for the initial Gnome2 release (like every other gnome
package at the moment, fyi).


Besides, it doesn't seem any mainstream
> developers of Nautilus are even engaging in our discussion. 
Don't take it as a lack of interest in improving nautilus - it is far
more likely that Darin and the others that work on nautilus are just
really damn busy with getting gnome2 out the door. 

If the
> current half ass UI is acceptable to them, then I've no hope for
> Nautilus and should give up any efforts or hopes for anything else.
> Maybe Ximian will supply the gnome desktop with a robust "file browser"
> in the future. 
> 
Remember the flak you took for being unnecessarily negative in your
initial email?  This comment isn't exactly a winner either.  Just
because you don't get immediate gratification doesn't mean it won't come
eventually.  If you can program, write the sidebar yourself.  It is
independent of Nautilus internals (As I understand it), so it shouldn't
be horribly difficult.  Nautilus *is* the robust file browser for
gnome's future.  It is just suffering from not enough volunteers.  If
you want to criticize its progress, feel free to actively improve
things.  


> I was told beforehand to act on my ideas when it comes to opensource
> development. I've done so and would have offered code but it doesn't
> seem possible to accomplish anything when the level of compromise and
> discussion on this open source project is approximately zero. 

I don't know what you're talking about here....Darin happily accepts
patches from people.  Code speaks a lot louder than words.  I'd bet you
that if you programmed a sidebar like what has been described, it would
be included in nautilus.