Re: How nautilus places item on desktop window?

[Cosimo Cecchi <cosimoc gnome org>]

Hi Leena,

as a general advice, you should look at sources from git master [1] to
make sure you get the latest code, as things might have changed in the
meanwhile (and they actually changed quite a lot from 2.30).

On Mon, 2011-02-14 at 13:54 +0530, leena chourey wrote:

> As you suggested in the last mail, nautilus-icon-container.c has all
> icon related details, but doubts/queries:
>       * How src/ and libnautilus-private/nautilus-icon-container.c are
>         related. I tried to display/debug using printf() in
>         nautilus-icon-container.c, but control does not reach there,
>         no print results?

You should be able to debug with printf() from nautilus-icon-container.c
just fine; maybe you just put them in an uncommon code path that was not
executed? libnautilus-private is just an internal library that includes
more low-level objects, which are usually instantiated from the other
classes in src/

>       * I want to checkout the methodology to place icons on desktop
>         using grid? Why focus does not goto the first item of next
>         column on down arrow key?
>       * How icons have no standard size to display and how icons are
>         placed in  uneven manner. Uneven means, according to the size
>         of icon the row decides?
>       * By which way control selects to move focus on next element of
>         same row?

I fail to parse your second question, but generally the best answer I
can give you to these very specific questions (such as 1 and 3) is "you
have to dig in the code to find it out" :) Code for icon container's
keynav starts around here [2].

NautilusIconContainer's icon layouting code is old, quite complex and
might have its bugs for sure; I don't think you can find anybody here on
the list who can answer these questions off-hand, without looking at the
code, so if you have a specific bug in mind, feel free to mention it
here or open a bug report at the GNOME bugzilla.

[1] http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus
[2]
http://git.gnome.org/browse/nautilus/tree/libnautilus-private/nautilus-icon-container.c#n3049

Thanks,

Cosimo