Re: Patches improving tree view (multi-root and auto-follow)

[Jürg Billeter <j bitron ch>]

On Wed, 2003-06-11 at 14:54, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 16:07, Jürg Billeter wrote:
> 
> > There were many discussions about improving the tree view to handle
> > multiple roots. I want to have something like this in nautilus 2.4, so
> > I've implemented a possible version.
> > See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62524
> 
> Ok, lets have a look at this.
> 
> This time I didn't really look at the patch. We need to first discuss
> how we want it to look and work.
> 
> This implementation uses a tab on the left of the tree, while the
> previous patch[1] someone worked on used multiple root elements. These
> have various pros and cons:
> 
> tabs on left
> pros: 
> * You only see the dirs from the specific root, avoiding confusion.
> * Its easier to locate another root. You don't have to scroll around   
> looking for it.
> cons:
> * Wastes more space horizontally.
> * Two levels of tabs can be confusing. Also makes keynav more
> complicated.
> * The tab can only have an icon, not any descriptive text, that wouldn't
> fit.
> 
> Multiple roots in tree
> pros: 
> * The roots can have descriptive names + icons
> * Doesn't waste more space than needed.
> * No nested tabs
> cons:
> * Finding the root you want can be painful.
> * You can see files from several roots at the same time, possibly
> confusing the user.
> 
> There is also a third way that seems to have most of the pros above.
> Make each root a separate sidebar tab, and use the normal sidebar tab
> selector to pick the one you want. I.E. you'd have both the normal tree
> and a "Homedir" entry in the sidebar menu.
> 
> I think this third way would work pretty well for nautilus.
I wouldn't be really satisfied with this way. It's better than it's now
but perhaps we should go exactly the opposite way and make each sidebar
tab a tab on the left. Ok, we miss the descriptive name point but are
tooltips not good enough? If we don't want to waste space horizontally
we could position the tabs on top because often the vertical space
doesn't matter that much to keep the overview. The pro is that one is
much quicker clicking on an always visible tab than using a menu.
However, in both ways IMO we need to have a clear separation between the
vfs roots and other sidebars. IIRC Konquerer has it like that but
_without_ separation and that takes you some of your overview.

> Furthermore, I think we need some more features:
> 
> * The toplevel node need to have a better name. For the root directory
> its now "/", and for the homedir its the directory name. They should be
> things like: "Toplevel Folder", "Home Folder", "Network Neighbourhood".
Already mentioned by Mark Finlay, I agree.

> * A way to add (and remove) custom treeview roots. One way would be by
> just DnDing a directory to the menu, but we also need to have an
> accessible/discoverable way in the menus.
Isn't there a way to get _all_ vfs modules or do we want really custom
roots which can lay anywhere in the filesystem? IMO that's not necessary
but I suppose there are ppl who would miss that.

> The smb tree doesn't work well because it has desktop files instead of
> subdirs. We probably want something like: 
> 
> diff -u -p -r1.76 nautilus-tree-model.c
> --- nautilus-tree-model.c       2 Apr 2003 11:50:51 -0000       1.76
> +++ nautilus-tree-model.c       11 Jun 2003 12:53:23 -0000
> @@ -740,7 +740,8 @@ should_show_file (NautilusTreeModel *mod
>  
>         if (should
>             && model->details->show_only_directories
> -           &&! nautilus_file_is_directory (file)) {
> +           &&! nautilus_file_is_directory (file)
> +           &&! nautilus_file_is_nautilus_link (file)) {
>                 should = FALSE;
>         }
>  
> To make it work better.
> 
> Opinions?
I'll try that, haven't really looked at the smb module.

Jürg