Re: Rethinking emblems

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 18:38 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
> Hello Alexander!
> Thank's for the feedback.
> 
> Alexander Larsson wrote:
> 
> >On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 15:15 +0200, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>I have done a small writeup on some smarter way of using emblems.
> >>Currently most of them are nothing more but pretty pictures you can 
> >>attach to your folders, but they have a lot of potential.
> >>Some of the stuff have been brought up before, like the watermarking of 
> >>folders.
> >>Well, anyway, here is the text:
> >>http://ramnet.se/~nisse/diverse/rethinking-emblems/
> >>
> >>Hope you can live with some misspellings.
> >>- Andreas
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >All interesting ideas. I like the automatic embleming. Some random
> >musings:
> >
> >We would need a watermarking image to go with each emblem. This
> >complicates the custom emblems handling, as i doubt many people will be
> >able to draw both an emblem and a watermark. Of course, some people do
> >really use custom emblems, so maybe we should allow those without
> >watermarks?
> >  
> >
> Ideally, the emblem and the watermarking image would be the same 
> (svg)-image, and I have comitted some scalable emblems to g-i-t. I hope 
> to finish the full set real soon.
> Perhaps some kind of solution along the lines of using the emblem as a 
> watermarking image, if it is scalable. If the image can't be scaled, no 
> watermarking image.

I'm not sure thats always the best thing. I think you often want the
emblem icon to be a standard little icon like the ones we have now,
while you want a watermark icon to be something else. You'd want the
watermark to cover a larger part of the background, and that probably
doesn't work well with just scaling the icon up.

> >The question of inheriting watermarks is interesting. We have some
> >requests for the background setting feature to be recursive. I think
> >watermarks should probably be recursive.
> >
> >What if one folder gets several (automatic) emblems. Say it contains
> >both jpegs and mp3s. What watermark do we use then?
> >  
> >
> I assume you're thinking of a user that also put the covers of albums in 
> his/her music folder (or something like that). In that case the number 
> of sound files outnumber the image files, so (if the system could keep 
> track of that) the music emblem should show up. In other cases both 
> emblems should show up.
> I really need to get back to the drawing board on this one, hopefully I 
> can figure out a nice solution.
> Seeing my home folder on the desktop with eleven different emblems don't 
> sounds too neat.
>
> There is also the issue that not everyone is as anal as I am when 
> sorting my files :).
> I realise that many users don't put all their music, and only the music 
> etc. in one folder. Apps like Beagle and Rythmnbox are also allowing 
> folks not to work as file clerks, so you have a really good point here.

I wasn't thinking of any specific case, rather i was thinking of the
unorganized case. Think of a download folder or just a random directory
with various files in it.

I think the emblem + watermark duo works best where it has additional
semantic value. Essentially where you have manually said that this
folder (and below it) is meant for some specific purpose (say, a
project, or whatever). Using it for auto-generated information is more
likely to just clutter stuff up.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's an obese devious gentleman spy searching for his wife's true killer. 
She's a scantily clad Buddhist lawyer fleeing from a Satanic cult. They fight 
crime!