Re: Beyond Nautilus 1.0

[Kevin Cullis <kevincu orci com>]

Heikki Keränen wrote:
> 
> The main problem for the user is: With traditional file manager you can
> see all file names in a folder, but you still have to open files to see
> what is inside -> looking for the right file is SLOW! Time to open the
> application takes forever and after that the application has to open a
> file which may be many megabytes by it's size. We should not only
> optimize the speed of the system (and UI) but also the time required for
> the user to make a realworld task. With the application you can open and
> see one file, but not multiple files (in fast and handy way). There
> should be something between those extremes!

This is where I need to comment.  The one feature which I enjoy from the
Mac, and miss the most, is when you have an application open and go to
the desktop and double click to open another like file.  The file
automatically opens up in another window in that app.  While GNOME does
provide a window listing of apps to open up a double-clicked doc, the
list is only alphabetical.  When I expect to open up a wp doc, I'd NOT
like to see XMMS in the list of apps to use, but a narrower list of apps
which could open up THAT file format.  I'd also like to see an icon with
a file format indication, such as RTF or TXT, in the icon even if an app
shows it's "proprietary" icon.  That way, I would know that I could open
that file in other apps or the one which created it.  By showing the
file format, I could then decide which app to open the file in.

Generally, when people organization file/information, they organize it
in one of five ways (in some cases, more): Catagories (or Type such as
file formats of mp3, RTF, GIFF or apps such as Wordprocessing,
Spreadsheets,etc.), Hierarchial (wordprocessing>writing>linuxjournal),
Time (first, last), Name (A-Z), or Process (such as start or finish,
developer or user).  If a file manager could accomplish such a thing,
more power to the ya and watch as the Windows and Mac user migrate to
Linux (I did!).  The catagories would be essential because at a glance I
would know what the app was WITHOUT memorizing the name and what it
does.  This saves me time, which is what a GUI should do, but not in all
cases.

> 
> > What you appear to be suggesting is a mother-of-all-file-managers which
> > wants to be all things to all people. Let me tell you now that it's
> > never going to happen - not in Linux anyway, I hope! How useful are
> > spectral analyses to 99% of the file-browsing community anyway? Maybe
> > a hex-view would be useful as well - I know *lots* of people who can
> > read hex!
> 
> On the other hand you are right: Spectral and waveform thumbnails are
> not suitable for everyone, but audio professionals could like this
> feature. You can learn different things from those figures: e.g. silence
> and louder parts of the sounds are easy to recognize. By default this
> feature could be turned off, but audio professionals could turn it on.
> This module could be replaced by a better one when people invent better
> ways to represent audio (room for creativity and innovations). You could
> make hex thumbnails for yourself if you find it usefull. This could be
> even default for the binary files not yet registered by other
> components.

What WordPerfect does when you open a file, when you're in WP, is show a
thumbnail scetch of the file, or at least the first few sentences of a
document.  Could it be switched between a "print view"  thumbnail or the
document or show the first few lines of a doc or spreadsheet?  Just a
thought.

> 
> And to avoid misunderstandings: In the case of filemanager view, I mean
> a view which can contain MULTIPLE files. To view and edit ONE file a
> separate application window is better. Thumbnail is usually associated
> with images, so I avoided "audio thumbnail" and used audio visualization
> instead.

See above statement.

> 
> Of course applications could provide browsing tools for multiple files
> (as PaintShop in Windows does). The problem however is that you have to
> start application and you can't easily change to a view which can
> present all media types (a feature which the user probably needs much).
> 
> > I may seem a little harsh in my reply and for good reason. Linux got
> > where it is today by modularising everything and resisting the one
> > ...
> 
> Take a look to the problem statement I presented above. Perhaps the
> modularisation used today should be done differently. I'am not saying
> that programmers of the filemanager should do everything. They just make
> the filemanager module, and developers of applications makes modules
> which can understand the file their application creates.
> 
> If you think Linux, you can do a lot of things with it. It fits everyone
> (if you don't count those people who think it is too difficult and those
> who can't find their favorite program for it). Application programs are
> like modules which make linux customizable. I think filemanager should
> be like linux. It lets you to do a lot various things, but still be
> customizable by users and extendable by various programmers.
> 
>         Heikki Keranen
> 
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> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-gui-list

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