Re: directory backgrounds

[Dave Bordoley <bordoley msu edu>]

On Fri, 2002-09-20 at 16:37, Dave Camp wrote:
> 
> * Should user-specified directory backgrounds exist at all?
> 
> It would be possible to just do away with directory view backgrounds
> altogether.  No other widgets in gnome (aside from the desktop) have
> user-controlled backgrounds.  Maybe icon views shouldn't either.
> 
> People might be attached to this feature, I don't know.

Well my personal opinion aside (i wouldn't be that sad if this feature
went away), most major file managers (explorer, osX finder) do have the
ability for users to pick an icon view background, usually there is a
preference to choose if this background is per-directory or for all
directories. Of course of the windows and mac users I know, I've never
seen one of them actually use this feature.

> 
> * Should backgrounds be specified by the nautilus theme?
> 
> I think the answer here is a pretty clear No, particularly as nautilus
> themes start to go away.

I agree with you, i think the idea of a nautilus theme needs to go away.
For the default sidebar, the only reason a pixmap is even used is the
lack of content. So maybe we could: 
1) make it more useful, add more stuff and use the gtk theme (ie none of
this change the sidebar background nonsense) or

2) remove it (not the sidebar shell, just the default one ie. keep the
tree, notes and history)

For the icon view, I think we should just honor the gtk theme, we
currently do this with the exception of pixmap themes. It would be nice
to support pixmap themes in the icon view, since they look nice. 

> 
> * Should icon backgrounds be per-directory?
> 
> This might depend on the outcome of the OO vs. nav discussion.  I'm
> inclined to think that they shouldn't.  I know that it annoyed me when I
> started using nautilus.  I could easily set the background for one
> directory, but I never wanted that.  I wanted to change the nautilus
> background, not the directory background.
> 

I tend to agree with your assesment even though I'm thoroughly a pro-OO
person. As mentioned before most major file managers have both
per-directory and universal background preferences. Whether or not this
is the right decision i'm not sure. On one hand I personally think the
option is sort of crack, and I would prefer that we just use the gtk
theme, but I have heard from various users on IRC that they do use this
feature, so I guess I'd be hesitant about removing it.

hope this is somehow helpful

dave