Re: Column view update & issues & tabs

[Francesco Fumanti <francesco fumanti gmx net>]

Hello,

> That sounds very similar to Apple's patented "spring loaded 
> folders".   I am not
> going to comment on what I think of that patent, but I think there may be
> a GNOME policy to avoid similar features.  Someone with more knowledge
> of this issue can probably comment.

I don't know whether the patent also applies to automatically open 
the folder under the pointer when doing a drag&drop in the column 
view and not closing the column hierarchy when the drag&drop 
finishes...

So when looking for an alternative, I thought that using tabs might 
be an alternative:

- the user navigates the columns to the item he wants to drag&drop

- he opens a new tab in the nautilus window, let us call it tab2

- in tab2 he navigates through the columns until he reaches the 
destination folder

- he clicks on tab1 to make the columns with the item to drag reappear

- he drags the item onto tab2 and the item gets moved or copied 
(depending like usual on whether selected folder in tab1 and tab2 are 
on the same volume) to the folder that was last selected in tab2

- upon releasing the item, nautilus shows the contents of tab2 to the 
user, so that the user has feedback about the item being added to the 
destination folder

- with the close symbol in tab2, the user can close tab2 and 
consequently he sees again the contents of tab1.


Someone could say that it is possible to do the same by opening a 
second nautilus window instead of having tabs. But having tabs saves 
the user of rearranging the windows so that the source and 
destination folders are visible.


By the way, this way of doing drag&drops will not only be convenient 
in column view, but also in the item and list view.


I realise that creating tabs will probably imply another another non 
negligible amount of coding. Could you please tell me what you think 
about the tabs idea?


As this tab functionality can also be seen independently from the 
column view, I wonder whether I should not file a RFE bug against 
Nautilus for the implementation of tabs.


Thanks for reading this.

Francesco