Re: Nautilus vs gnome-shell and the future

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2009-12-02 at 21:15 -0500, Ray Strode wrote:
> > I'd like to add some way to put files (file references really)
> > somewhere in the shell UI. Maybe just drag them to the side to make
> a
> > pile or a drawer. That way you could temporary put the files you're
> > working there and work on them easily from multiple apps.
>
> Like a shelf area?  Would it show up in the activities overview too?

I don't have a finished design here, just throwing out the idea so we
can think about it. One approach would be a shelf area, somewhat like
embedding a nautilus view in the shell. Another way to do it would be
more like the old-school gnome panel drawers, or the stacks in OSX dock.

It all depends on what we want to do with it. Stacks/drawers/piles are a
way to keep a reference to a file (or set of files) that you can easily
access (since its accessible from the always visible panel), however its
more limited in how you can use the reference (possible operations: open
it, move/copy it somewhere, remove from stack, dnd to application, open
containing folder).

A shelf area has a lot more features, being a file manager view. On the
other hand it takes a lot more screen space when active. Thus covering
other applications when showed.

Should it be visible in the activities overview? I dunno.

> > Another question is how we reformulate the UI for selecting spatial
> > mode. Right now its a checkbox for enabling "Always open in browser
> > windows", and rather than just having this True by default i'd like
> to
> > somehow have a checkbox to enable spatial mode. I just can't think
> of
> > a good way to describe spatial mode in the UI. Does anyone have an
> idea?
> Maybe if the shell is running it should just go into "shell" mode, and
> otherwise keep the current ui?
> Do you think nautilus should be able to go to spatial mode / manage
> the desktop with the shell running?

I think we want to focus on one particular design as the major goal
driving what we work on and how we decide features should work, etc. So,
I don't think it makes sense to have the mode be dynamically changed
like this. We should just make what we thing is the future be the
default and design everything around that. Then we leave the spatial
mode in for people who has used that historically and want to keep using
it.

> > With nautilus not handling the desktop there really is no reason to
> > run all of nautilus all the time. Its currently needed for the
> > automount handling, and its possible to turn on daemon mode so it
> can
> > do this even if the desktop is not visible. However, this seems a
> bit
> > unnecessary, so we should try to factor out the automount stuff to a
> > separate binary.
> Hmm, it automounts volumes... maybe we could call it something like:
> 
> gnome-volume-manager
> 
> :-)
> 
> Actually, there's a bug open about doing it as a gnome-settings-daemon
> plugin:
> 
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=585545

Sounds fine to me. Nautilus does a bunch more than just mounting, so a
good approach would be to start with an plugin shipping in nautilus,
splitting out everything needed. Then we can see how much of the other
nautilus codebase is needed in it, and possibly move it elsewhere if it
seems like it could stand alone well.

-- 
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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
       alexl redhat com            alexander larsson gmail com 
He's a globe-trotting crooked paranormal investigator possessed of the uncanny 
powers of an insect. She's a manipulative hypochondriac archaeologist from a 
secret island of warrior women. They fight crime!