list-view icons, text and zoom-level

[Tero Huttunen <tero huttunen tut fi>]

Hi!

Nautilus icon-view already uses zoom-levels to adjust the amount of
information shown about the files, however the list-view doesn't do
anything alike. The list-view increases the icon and font-sizes when
zooming in. Of course the list-view shows the file-information in
columns, but that doesn't mean that the font-size should get bigger when
zooming in. 

Also, at the smallest zoom-level the list-view uses 12x12 icons, which
isn't consistent with anything else in GNOME. I did some experimenting
with Nautilus and modified the icon and text sizes at the smallest zoom
level to match with GtkFileChooser (16x16 icons). The result looks like
this:

http://www.students.tut.fi/~huttune2/nautilus/nautilus-list-smallest-new.png

where as it used to look like this:

http://www.students.tut.fi/~huttune2/nautilus/nautilus-list-smallest-old.png


In my opinion, a good list-view zoom behaviour would be:

zoom-level       behaviour
--------------------------
 smallest        16x16 icon, no thumbnails even when turned on, since
                 icons are so small that thumbnails are basically small
                 squares with different colors and therefore not very
		 useful, consistent with GtkFileChooser
 smaller         24x24 icons, thumbnails if turned on (zooming in gave
                 additional information)
 small           36x36 icons, thumbnails if turned on             
 standard        ..and so on..

In all zoom-levels text font should be the Application-font (same size).


And finally, is there anyone who really uses the icon-view at the
smallest zoom-level? I think it is only confusing for a beginner who
accidentally sets the smallest zoom-level, after which he/she is unable
to see the filenames. (nautilus does show the filename of focused file
in the statusbar, though) If I hadn't seen the code implementing it, I
would have thought of it as a bug.

http://www.students.tut.fi/~huttune2/nautilus/nautilus-icons-smallest-old.png


-- 
Tero Huttunen