group view in nautilus

["Gang Chen nokia com" <Gang Chen nokia com>]

Hi,

    This mail will be a little bit long since it may request a big change , be patient , :) .
    
     I come up with the group view first from Desktop.  You may have a lot of icons in desktop so that if we can group icons in the Desktop and manage icons according to group, it will be much cleaner. One windows programs that implemented this ideas,  you can get more info from http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/.
    Then I search the web and found similar ideas from ubuntu users. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/15144/. So this will be cool that if we can support group view also for any directory. While for list view, this may not be that useful, but Windows 7 support this.(I saw the webpage, but I can't find it anymore)

     Nautilus was totally new to me (I didn't know that Desktop is managed by Nautilus 2 weeks ago), so the following proposed change should be optimized by some people who knows more.

     1. create a new class called NautilusViewManager, which has 1:1 relationship with window-slot. It will load directory, monitor directory , and manager views inside the the same window-slot
             ViewManager will always has a default view, and several user configured views. configured view stores its data, such as the file list, view position, icon position... If the directory has no configured at all, then every file goes to default view.
      2. rename the directory_view to base_view, and remove the load directory function from this base view.
      3. since load directory function is handled by ViewManager, nautilus-window-manage-view.c may be removed.(and it is strange for me that this file exists.)
    
     window-slot, view factory, directory_view are coupled together tightly for load directory. After change, when window slot loads a new location , it will be easier, just starts a new viewManager and give the new location to the new viewManager.  Window-slot only talks to ViewManager.

     any comments ?



Br, Chen Gang