Re: spatial nautilus proposal

[Elia Cogodi <eliacogodi tin it>]

On Fri, 2004-10-08 at 12:18 +0200, Luca Cappelletti wrote:
> Hello,
> this objects oriented world, made by objects, needs the capability to
> handle, manipulate, alter their attributes directly.
> The place where you have a one-to-one, directly visual feedback of its
> manipulation capability is the window menu bar.
> Nautilus start to offer it's attributes manipulation into the File
> menu but there's a clear inconsistency beetween the contextual menu of
> a selected icons (the target objects) and it's File item menu bar
> (when the folder/window is open).
> When I work into the object (the simplest case is a nautilus folder) I
> need the capability to alter directly it's attributes (Properties).
> Did you ever seen how a SGI IRIS window work! Enclosing it's
> properties into the menu bar and make it contestual if I select an
> object into the window itself.
> Enclosing the properties into the menu bar avoid to  minimize the use
> of right click mouse (reducing attrition cognition to the ostile mouse
> using from the prime time no-geek users).
> The Desktop will be the root of all window objects.Actually to access
> to some of the Desktop properties we have to right click into it!But a
> Panel applet could provide the same functionalities!So that, again, no

I don't see all this need to avoid contextual menus. If used
consistently they are a very clear interface to directly manipulating
the underlying object.
Still, I can see that at the moment the nautilus file menu is quite
unlogically composed of actions that work on the selected files inside
this folder (like Open), of actions that work on this folder (like
Close) and of actions that don't really have a target (like Open
Location or Connect to server).
Probably having as first menu a Folder menu with all the actions for
this folder, and as second the File menu with only the actions attaining
to the selected files would be much clearer.
Having the all-comprising File menu as first makes sense for an
Application that works on documents. But since we're talking spatial
here, why should we keep this relic?

-- 
Elia Cogodi <eliacogodi tin it>