Re: Proposal: "Preview" shell for EoG/gpdf/ggv

[Biswapesh Chattopadhyay <biswapesh_chatterjee tcscal co in>]

How about if all (pre)view components support a particular well-defined
interface using Bonobo so that any application can (pre)view files of
any type supported by any of the previewers. I think this is how
Nautilus currently does it - doesn't it ? We only need to extend the
interface a bit probably to support the hierarchy concept.

A minimal shell can then be written which uses this interface to act as
an universal 'file previewer'.

This will also give other GNOME apps (like Anjuta) more powerful viewing
capabilities, and might act as a first step towards implementing a
preview-widget for the file selector.

Possible candidates for file formats are pdf (Gpdf), ps (GGV) , abw
(Abiword) , html (GtkHTML2) , images (EOG), archives (File Roller), etc.
(basically any document format with page/object/other hierarchy).

Rgds,
Biswa.

> 
> Hi Martin, Jaka and Jens,
> 
> So, Martin and Jaka have already posted about the idea of a single shell
> for
> viewing PS and PDF files using the ggv and gpdf backends.
> 
> It occured to me this afternoon that EoG worked exactly the same way - it's
> an image viewing component with a minimal shell. Wouldn't it be cool if all
> three components used the same shell for static document viewing? (It would
> work very similarly to Apple's "Preview" utility in OS X.) Other apps could
> easily install components for this shell too... Holy cow -> Bonobo in the
> real world!
> 
> Someone is going to ask the question: "Isn't Nautilus supposed to be this
> 'super shell', huh?" The only sensible answer to that, of course, is: "You
> are an idiot." But seriously, Nautilus is really not the best place to be
> viewing files. Custom file list views, sure. Weird file viewers where files
> are meant to be, no.
> 
> Martin reckons he's ready to do this kind of thing for 2.4... How about it?
> 
> Rock on!
> 
> - Jeff
> 
> --
>      "I guess there's part of me that's always resented it... to be an
>    actor, you have to have someone else say yes to you." - Edward Norton
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