Re: spatial mode, world map

[Daniel Borgmann <spark-mailinglists web de>]

On Tue, 2005-04-26 at 11:32 +0200, Magnus Damm wrote:
> To me the most logical solution for that specific problem would be to
> have some kind of zoomable "world map" showing all reachable folders
> in a gigantic tree structure. This is to provide the user with a way
> to find their way to a specific folder quickly by just looking at the
> world map and clicking the folder - bypassing a long path of spatial
> clicking.
[..]

This sounds like a good project for an experimental third party app. I
think more important than the actual implementation method is the
concept of providing additional means to directly jump to your target
location. Complaints about spatial folders usually center around
navigation, while the strength of said folders obviously isn't
navigation, but file management. By providing different means to jump to
your target, this drawback gets mostly mitigated.
One such method is the Open Location dialog, which I use quite a lot.
When I'm working on themes for example, opening the obscure system
folders /usr/share/themes and ~./themes becomes trivial and fast, even
without desktop links or bookmarks.
There is also the idea of providing a tree-based listview[1], which
would allow to unfold a deep tree in the same window and then directly
jump to the target.
One approach which would already come close to your "world map" idea,
would be to create an application like the browser, but without the
folder view. So it would only be used for navigation (mainly a tree or
even a column view), while selected folders would open in their own
window.
What intrigues me so much about the whole spatial concept is to a large
extend, that it makes cooperation between different desktop objects not
just possible, but also natural and efficient.

[1] Like this:
http://placement-test.mmlc.northwestern.edu/techrequirements/images/os9listview.jpg
-- 
Daniel Borgmann <daniel borgmann gmail com>