Re: [Utopia] gnome-vfs HAL patch, take 3

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Fri, 2004-07-09 at 14:09, David Zeuthen wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 09, 2004 at 11:26:53AM +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:

> > One thing struck me though. In _hal_add_volume it seems like we're
> > always creating a drive for each volume. Thats not necessary in general.
> > Its perfectly fine for a volume to not have a drive. In fact, thats
> > expected behaviour for volumes that are not "removable media plugged
> > into a drive".
> > 
> 
> Ok, this makes sense, I didn't catch that one. For some drives
> (especially external harddisk enclosures connected by USB) we can't
> really realiably determine whether the drive contains removable media,
> so in that case we'll add the drive anyway. But I'll make the change.

Cool.

> > What about the attached (untested) gnome-vfs-export-hal-udi.patch? It
> > exports the hal udi as a string, whenever its availible. This lets
> > nautilus recover UDI information from computer:// since the Drive/Volume
> > id is availible in the desktop files there. This would make it easy to
> > do things like adding emblems in nautilus.
> > 
> 
> This looks good, I'll try it out tonight.

The patch forgot to free hal_udi in GnomeVFSVolume when its destroyed.

> > I think its better to detect devices when plugged in, and perhaps launch
> > the right app, or maybe just show the device as plugged in somewhere
> > (notification area?). And then the application that handles cameras
> > should of course use hal and automatically do the right thing wrt its
> > user interface when the camera is plugged in. 
> > 
> 
> That's right, we probably want to do that anyway, launching applications
> etc. should be in gnome-volume-manager.
> 
> >From what I can see many people like to use "life style" devices for
> data storage, and for cameras it is really a storage device, although
> the "card reader" happens to be a camera possibly with a proprietary
> protocol to access it through e.g. libgphoto2.
> 
> But I agree this clutters the computer:/// location, I mean continuing
> my line of argument more or less any device with storage capabilities
> will end up in computer:///. 

Yeah, even if its technically possible to store arbitrary data on the
camera (and some geeks might want to do that) I think putting it in
computer:// could confuse people as to what the device is and how to
best use it.

> Maybe computer:/// should exactly be the location to look for your
> devices that has storage no matter what method we use to connect to
> it? And the icon used should reflect what the device is.

I think it should be the location you go for all your devices who's
primary and perhaps secondary use is storage of random files. And the
icon should reflect the type of media/device.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl redhat com    alla lysator liu se 
He's a leather-clad neurotic grifter with acid for blood. She's a bloodthirsty 
African-American nun trying to make a difference in a man's world. They fight 
crime!