Re: nautilus improvements

[Danny Milosavljevic <danny milo gmx net>]

Hi,

Am Freitag, den 31.03.2006, 10:19 +0200 schrieb Stephan Michels:
> > > > Archives are archives precisely so that they aren't in the way of normal
> > > > operations and thus what is in them should NOT be found except when you
> > > > _specifically_ demand it. Many people get that wrong and use archives
> > > > just to save space when they should *use a decent filesystem that does
> > > > that automatically instead*.
> > >
> > > I meant on demand. That's why I wrote checkbox.
> >
> > well, given one opens those archives once every full moon or less, I'd
> > put it into the category "too seldomly used, use extra app" - and
> > indeed, it is one.
> > Now, file-roller could be made to look and be useable exactly like
> > nautilus, if that's what's bothering you...
> 
> Sad to hear. I thought to treat archives like regular folders was one
> of the best
> suggestions. I use midnight commander a lot and love this feature.
> 

> I don't understand this argument here. The situation is the same as
> with a ftp-client, why would one integrate a ftp client(similar to) 
> into nautilus if you can handle it in a external program like for
> example gftp. 

Indeed, why... boggles my mind. UNIX says a program should do _one_ task
and do it well. Not to devise some common minimal api and butcher every
protocol implementation to adhere to it, no matter how unfitting it
were... (ftp, zip, smb, whatever ...)

> Because it makes the whole interface simpler. You don't
> have to learn two programs.

No, one just needs to make the other program look and behave the same
and launch it from the filemanager. I'm not into inserting additional
layers between the OS and the app for no good reason.

For the user, he doesn't notice a difference. For the programmer, it
makes the whole thing _a lot_ easier and more sane.

> 
> The same situation with a cd burning program. I love the integration
> of the cd burning abilities of nautilus. 

[Well, beside the point, but I had a nautilus-script that calls a small
pygtk program that burns the selected files on a cd, immediately.]

> I can imaging a similar
> behaviour for archives, like an entry in the context menu of a
> file/dir to create a new archive of it, similar to burn this iso
> image.

Yes, that's good... but it's not _the filemanager_ that will create the
archive. As I said, with desktop actions, that already works today. (or,
should... the file-roller desktop file has a desktop action "Create
Archive" and so the filemanager will show it on files of that type - in
the File menu (= context menu))

And also "Extract Archive", that will do just that, immediately. 

But _not_ having the file manager be able to descend into a gazillion
different archive formats. What for?

Disclaimer: Now, that's just my point of view and nautilus surely has
their own :)

> 
> Please don't drop this idea.
> 
> Stephan Michels.

cheers,
  Danny