Re: [PATCH] Emblems for Tree and List View

[Ryan McDougall <ryan mcdougall telusplanet net>]

On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 10:31, Jürg Billeter wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 18:14, Fabio Gomes wrote:
> > Thank you very much for this patch, Jürg.
> > 
> > I was thinking about one more idea for the tree...
> > 
> > Currently, when there are no sub-items in a folder and you click the
> > arrow to expand it, it shows a weird "(Empty)" child. Now that the tree
> > is part of the file manager, is it possible to tell the tree widget that
> > the folder is empty, allowing to hide the arrow?
> Something like that should be possible. But in reality it's not as easy
> as it perhaps seems to be. Some random thoughts:
> - Nautilus would need to check every folder whether it is empty or not,
> so this could be a speed issue if there are many folders and over a slow
> network.
> - Nautilus would need to monitor all folders currently displayed in the
> tree view for changes, as a change could lead to a change of the arrow
> (show or hide). I don't know whether monitoring that many folders could
> have an impact. I assume, it is ok with event-based monitoring
> (fam-dnotify) but it could be problematic with polling.
> 
> The best would probably be to write a test implementation and look for
> speed issues.
> 
> > Another idea is to reduce the size of the icons in the tree to at least
> > match the text size. What do you think about this?
> IMO the icon size and the text size don't correlate that bad (it's the
> same as in the list view). The icons would be too tiny if their height
> had to be exactly the same as the text size (==> one couldn't recognize
> emblems anymore).
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jürg

Perhaps instead of showing an empty child, when the use clicks on the
empty folder, the arrow simply disappears and sends a tool-tip saying
the folder is empty. In that way we dont waste a column of treeview but
we till notify the user there is nothing to be seen. 

Digressing a bit, the above leads me to consider what Nautilus folders
should say on mouse-over, if anything...

Although using scanning all visible directories is a performance hit +
fam, we should still consider it for usability reasons.

Cheers,
Ryan