questions regarding two Nautilus issues people report frequently

[Christian Neumair <cneumair gnome org>]

Dear Alex,

since we have an imminent Nautilus release, I would like to resolve the
following two issues, which are discussed in Bugzilla:

1) Small icon files are thumbnailed [1]

The old code [2] prefered gnome_icon_lookup() over thumbnailing, which
used small images as icons if possible [cf.
nautilus_icon_factory_get_icon_for_file(),
GNOME_ICON_LOOKUP_FLAGS_SHOW_SMALL_IMAGES_AS_THEMSELVES].

Is this a regression, or did you remove this intentionally?

If it is a regression, how do we implement it without sync I/O? Should
NautilusThumbnail (asynchronously) obtain the icon dimensions before
thumbnailing, and either use GnomeThumbnail or create a loadable GIcon
from the file if it is smaller than the thumbnail size?

2) cp-like behavior wrt mtime [3]

ppl complain a lot that we do not preserve the mtime on copying.
Actually, I totally agree with them, for three reaons:

* Copying a file and pasting it elsewhere to me means duplicating it and
renaming the duplicate afterwards. Duplication should include all its
attributes.

[Note that since we use the copy_job() callback for duplicate
operations, ATM we do not even replicate all attributes of the original
file when duplicating]

* ppl do not really care about console utility semantics. This is a
different world.

* Our move / copy file operations are consistent wrt file conflict
management [unlike mv and cp]. So shouldn't we also be consistent wrt
file property management [unlike mv and cp], instead of being
inconsistent [like mv and cp].

I think intuititvely file operations should be perceived like:
* duplicate: file A -> file B, A:B=1:1
* copy = duplicate [target being in another folder]
* move = copy + delete original = duplicate A to B + rename B + delete
file A

And these semantics are actually provided by Nautilus 2.20 and earlier -
I do not remember a single complaint.


Thanks in advance for your response!

best regards,
 Christian


[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=512905
[2]
http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/nautilus/branches/gnome-2-20/libnautilus-private/nautilus-icon-factory.c?revision=13249&view=markup
[3] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=515777

-- 
Christian Neumair <cneumair gnome org>