Re: Nautilus state of mission (was: Re: Reasoning for Removal of Extra Pane Mode?)

[Holger Berndt <berndth gmx de>]

On Do, 02.08.2012 07:09, Olav Vitters wrote:

>> I would also very much be interested in the real reasons for this
>> removal.
>
>There is a blog post going into some of the thoughts behind the various
>changes:
>http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2012/08/01/cross-cut/

Very interesting that this news is now broadcasted on a personal blog.
So, what is that? The official Nautilus team point of view? An
individual's ideas? Why is it not announced where people can find it
(note where the mail that I refered to was sent, like here, and d-d-l,
and gnome announce, ...)? Why is it only broadcasted _long after_ all
commits have been done? I mean, starting one's sentences with "We, as a
community, ..." doesn't really cut it if it's not lived, does it?

So, in order to answer this blog post on the same forum, being a GNOME
foundation member, I guess I could have my blog aggregated on p.g.o,
and write a post myself. I can guess what the PR team would think about
this kind of communication. I'll rather comment here, even when knowing
that it's likely to be ignored. Let's see what he writes about the
extra pane...

>The first reason was that it was undiscoverable

That's the first argument? Well, there's a menu item for it. Want to
make it yet more discoverable? Then - aeh - propose a design for it.

Also, less discoverable features can also be useful (thinking of
Nautilus Scripts for example - but I don't want to give anybody
ideas...)

>stood in the way of providing a better alternative

A claim without backup.

>Even if you never used the Extra Pane you always had useless Move To
>and Copy To items in the menus

In fact, the original proposal had those menu items only displayed when
the extra pane was open. It was a review comment to make them always
visible, but greyed out, because that's the way GNOME interfaces are
supposed to look like. So again - kinda weird reasoning here..

>Should we keep the feature for which we have a new and better
>alternative in Nautilus

We don't, as explained numerous times, and never commented upon.

>a pile of bugs getting no attention in bugzilla

I commented on this in the other thread.

Really, that's all that he can come up with? When I was irritated
before, I am stunned now. But I start to understand why a discussion
was avoided beforehand.

I'm not gonna comment in detail on the rest, although much would remain
to be said. Like the hillarious part where William linked a message
from this very ML (huh? He's actually reading it? "We’ve heard the
complaints loud and clear", anyone?) stating that the context menu was
too crowded - unfortunately, the poster failed to understand that 95%
of his complains were in fact extensions. Want to get rid of those menu
items? Don't install the extensions! Done! But it makes a good strawman.

>Don’t hesitate to ask for help on the nautilus mailing list, or on IRC
>in #nautilus or #gnome-design. Meet you there!

We'll see. I can't see a mail from William on this ML in the last
couple of years, though.

Holger