Re: Nautilus epiphany integration & file transfers

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gmail com>]

On Fri, 2005-06-17 at 14:04 +0200, Raphaël Slinckx wrote:
> > I think a nice system would be if all slow file transfer operations in
> > the system (say longer than 3 seconds) showed up in a shared dialog that
> > pops up when each new download starts. You can see each current file
> > transfer, either in a collapsed state where you see estimated time left
> > only, or in a more detailed state where you see things like download
> > rate, current amount downloaded etc. If you hide/close the progress
> > window it shows up as an icon in the panel (similar to e.g. the
> > NetworkManager applet or the battery applet). You can tell from the icon
> > if its downloading or if its finished, and if you click on it you get
> > the progress window back.
> > 
> > Actually, I'm not even sure such a progress dialog setup need to be
> > implemented in nautilus. Maybe nautilus is just a user of the progress
> > subsystem, just as epiphany is.
> 
> In the comments of my blog post, someone talked about his project (or
> maybe it was someone else's project)
> 
> http://gtask.sourceforge.net/
> http://gtask.sourceforge.net/averti/averti.html
> 
> It appear quite un-active, but it if more for the idea that i come up
> with this.
> 
> Would it be generally accepted to have that sort of thing included with
> gnome desktop ?
> 
> Let's say a library you can link against, containing simple hooks to
> add/remove/modify long-running tasks, with maybe a way to add
> retro-action, for example cancelling things .
> 
> nautilus , and epiphany, and gaim file transfer, and others would be
> client of such a thing (it would be a dektop service listening on dbus
> for example, launched with the desktop). When a transfer starts, the
> window show up with all pending transfers, you wan hide it and it goes
> in your tray panel, allowing to come back to it if you need to. If you
> let it open, it's more or less like the actual progress window, except
> that it would stack acive and upcoming transfers in a single window.

I think this is really the best approach.  Then any application that's
transferring files can notify the desktop of the status.  It wouldn't
be specific to Nautilus, but Nautilus could make use of it to provide
more information to the user.

> From a nautilus point of view, i suppose it would simply mean changing
> calls to gtk, to calls to that library, that internally would be
> transmitted via dbus to that daemon, that in turn would show it's window
> if any active download exist, or create a new one..
> 
> Now this thing can be gnome-specific (allowing nifty gnome features), or
> not (cross desktop, but i like that less)

We'll get a lot more application buy-in i it's a cross-desktop thing.
A system like this can really wow people, but only if it's used by
all their file-transferring applications.

> > Having emblems for files being downloaded sounds nice, although I'm not
> > sure of the exact use case for this. However, I don't think animating
> > them or showing percentage on them makes a whole lot of sense. You don't
> > generally keep a whole filemanager window around scrolled to a specific
> > file just to see the progress of the download. Furthermore it introduces
> > lots of complexity and slowdown in the core file manager for a sort of
> > fringe "cool effect". Actually, maybe the download emblem will be sort
> > of confusing if not all forms of downloads/transfers will use it. For
> > instance, is it obvious to people that a file being downloaded from
> > epiphany is a "download", but not a slow copy of a file with nautilus
> > from an ftp site, or a slow usb flash memory?
> 
> Concerning the emblems i didn't change my mind yet, even macosX has
> these, so it must be a Good Thing :)
> 
> Animating them i wouldn't like it, but showing a simple progress, for
> example with 10 different steps would be very useful to have a direct
> feedback on download progress for a "single-file-i-want-to-view-now-but
> need-to-know-when-it's-done"
> 
> Emblem aren't a good solution for this since the different progress
> emblems are presented to the user in the emblem chooser. What i would
> like to do is create special "hidden emblem" that i can use, or maybe
> integrating directly in nautilus an API for setting progress through
> FileInfo properties. I have seen in GTK 2.8 that they have a new cell
> renderer that does progress using a progress bar, maybe it can be used
> instead of an emblem ?

I think overlaying a small progress bar, as if it were an emblem,
would look really nice.  Honestly, I think Nautilus needs to be
able to hide certain emblems from the emblem list anyway.  Emblems
added automatically, like the VCS emblems, don't really need to be
shown to the user.

A small vertical progress meter would look really slick.  It wouldn't
take up too much space, and it wouldn't be very distracting to the eye.
It doesn't have to be a real GTK+ progress bar.  Just a little bar that
fills up, sort of like the progress meter Nautilus uses as the window
icon for file transfer status windows (which rocks, by the way).

Overlay that progress meter on, say, the top-left corner of the icon,
and you've got a sexy but unobtrusive effect.  Now somebody just has
to figure out how to make it sexy in list view.

I've thought about this a few times before, and always thought it
would be a kick-ass feature.  But I never stepped up to write the
code.  I'm glad somebody's having a go at it.  Keep rocking.

--
Shaun