Sidebar tree view

[Colomban Wendling <lists ban herbesfolles org>]

TL;DR: Please reintroduce the treeview sidebar feature.


I know this has been discussed in 2010 in the thread "The Future of
Nautilus: Tree Sidebar and Split View" [1] in this very list, but
apparently it wasn't any kind of successful, so I'm starting again.

I recently reported a bug about the tree side pane being gone from
Nautilus 3.6: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=710589.  This
got closed today as "Resolved, duplicate" of bug
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697739.  Fair enough, my
report is a kind of duplicate, even though the other one looked more
like "the key doesn't work this is a bug" rather than "the side tree
view is gone this is a missing feature", but whatever.  What really
puzzles me is that the other bug was itself closed as a duplicate of
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676897.

This last bug is about *removing* the sidebar, and I must say I see no
rationale here, plus a complete and utter ignorance of the comments
saying they don't like the removal.

The rationale in the bug is "It is inconsistent with the file chooser,
doesn't work well with touch, is really hard to use, and isn't
consistent with any other GNOME 3 apps.".  I don't see much argument here:

1) "It is inconsistent with the file chooser" -- if you want full
consistency, add a tree sidebar to the file chooser, but honestly the
file chooser is for *saving of selecting a file*, while Nautilus is a
*file manager*.  Managing files is a much more complex task than
choosing one, so having an additional feature in Nautilus makes full
sense.  Moreover, the places sidebar was the *default* in any new
install, so it was "inconsistent" only to those who *willfully* chose
the option in Nautilus.

2) "doesn't work well with touch" -- I'm sorry but I honestly don't give
a damn about touch, I'm a *DESKTOP* user, like probably more than 80% of
the Gnome users.  And as many in the above report noted, the touch users
weren't forced to use that panel, it wasn't even the default!

3) "is really hard to use" -- subjective for sure, and I'm
counter-arguing that without the tree side view I just cannot use
Nautilus sensibly.  How do I move files from "a/b" to "a/c"?  This is
clearly not easy, and having 2 separate windows is inconvenient and not
practical for people with small screens.

4) "and isn't consistent with any other GNOME 3 apps" -- which apps, and
why isn't it consistent?  And even, the other apps are NOT file manager!
 and again, the sidebar tree view WASN'T EVEN THE DEFAULT.


So those 4 reasons don't seem to me anything like close to legitimate
the removal.  And you'll see that starting with comment 13
(https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676897#c13) the users start
to complain and ask for the feature to come back -- but since the report
is closed, nobody notices and nobody cares.

It wouldn't be so frustrating if *NEW* reports asking for the tree view
to come back weren't closed as "duplicates" of the *very opposite report
that REMOVED it* with no further explanation.


So again, please reintroduce the tree view sidebar, I cannot use
Nautilus without it.  Please.  If you don't like how it was implemented
before, fair enough, you can e.g. merge it with the Place sidebar by
allowing to unfold the tree beneath each item, but please, reintroduce
the feature.


Regards,
Colomban

[1] https://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2010-June/msg00035.html